Business benefit of software process improvement Presentation –Johan Andersson –Christian...

Business benefit of software process improvement

• Presentation– Johan Andersson– Christian Lindblom

Proof of benefits from software process improvement

• Often quoted examples– US Air Force Logistics Command:

invested ~$5 million

direct savings ~$2 million – Hughes Aircraft:

invested ~$0.5 million

over one year saved ~$2 million– Raytheon:

invested ~$1 million

over four years saved ~$16 million

Blekinge Institute of Technology

SE-371 79 Karlskrona

+46 455 38 50 00

www.bth.se/eng

Results of software process improvements

• Improved product quality

• Shorter time to market

• More productivity

• Which in turn leads to saved money



+46 455 38 50 00

www.bth.se/eng

Evidence given in book

• Evidence given in book– 7 case studies– 4 Europe– 3 USA



+46 455 38 50 00

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Evidence from Europe

• Quality initiatives/studies– European Systems and Software

Initiative (ESSI)– IBM’s European software

development benchmark



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• Improving the project estimation process– Engineering Ingegneria Informatica SPA– Formal specification for non-functional

requirements – Allowed for tracing impact on development time

throughout development cycles – With each iteration more data is gathered

allowing for better estimates– Applied experimentally to six projects, all showing

lower deviation from estimates– Better results could be related to “luck”, low

number of non-functional requirements



+46 455 38 50 00

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• Using formal specification methods to improve subcontracting methods– ENEL SPA CRA– Improved structure of requirements specification

allowing for improved maintainability of outsourced projects

– Two similar projects tracked the one with improved specifications got a reduced cost

– Improved requirements specifications simplified acceptance phase

– Better results for the project where improvements were made can be due to other factors



+46 455 38 50 00

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• Introduction to configuration management– Datamat Ingegneria dei Sistemi SpA– Introduced configuration management in the

development of financial products– Initially began with studying the objects that were

to be managed – Showed improvements in managing change,

reproducibility of product releases, validation of product versions and the passing of components between workers

– Results could be due to improved knowledge about the objects that were to be managed



+46 455 38 50 00

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• Establishing a software process organizational and management infrastructure– Computer-Logic SA– Used CMM for validation of the company– Tried to make up for the weak parts– Benefited from a general improvement of the

company's infrastructure– Could be the improved quality awareness that

caused the improvementBlekinge Institute of Technology


+46 455 38 50 00

www.bth.se/eng

Evidence from the USA

• Quality organisation– The Software Engineering Institute

(SEI)



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• Software Engineering Division at Hughes Aircraft– Started using CMM to evaluate themselves

continuously– Decisions of improvements based in the fault

found during assessments– Improved quality in general– Knowledge about things to improve are always

helpful– Can improvements actually be seen from year to

year after several years of use?



+46 455 38 50 00

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• Raytheon: another pioneer of software process improvement– Adopted a three-phased paradigm for process

improvement– Conducted a self-assessment and where rated at

level 1– Initiated a process improvement program– Created an organizational infrastructure to

support process improvement– resulted in 7.7 times more money saved than

invested and a two-fold increase in productivity



+46 455 38 50 00

www.bth.se/eng


• Space Shuttle Onboard Software– Poor project management, especially the inability

to manage within the constraints set by cost, schedule, functionality and quality

– Driving projects from schedule, not quality requirements

– Failure to control the contents of requirements and software product baselines

– Failure to track errors and to make progress changes that eliminate their causesBlekinge Institute of Technology


+46 455 38 50 00

www.bth.se/eng

Lessons learned

• Alignment with business needs and customer satisfaction

• Focused investment makes significant benefits possible

• Demonstrate the benefits• Benefits will materialize in the mid to long

term• Take an incremental approach• Sell the idea to the whole organization



+46 455 38 50 00

www.bth.se/eng

General questions raised

• To few case studies• No criticism towards the results• Only success stories• Necessity of separating European and

American companies?• Do the American and European companies

differ in their reasoning for attempting quality improvements?



+46 455 38 50 00

www.bth.se/eng

Epilogue

• Process maturity: another buzzword• The role of standards• Industrialization of software

development• What is the next step?



+46 455 38 50 00

www.bth.se/eng

Business benefit of software process improvement Presentation –Johan Andersson –Christian...

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