Concepts on Measuring the Benefits of Software Process Improvement

The software community initially became aware of process improvement from the works of Deming, Juran, and Crosby. The current awareness and activity regarding software process improvement was sparked by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) with the release of its original software process maturity model. Following the advice of the SEI, many software organizations initiated software process improvement efforts to improve the quality of their products by improving the processes that produce those products. The question that many managers are continually asking today, though, is: How much has my organization benefited from the changes we have made? Unfortunately, many organizations did not include a method of measuring those benefits in their improvement activities. This report describes some concepts that organizations can tailor and build upon to develop a method for determining the benefits they have received from their software process improvement activities.