ESPITI - A EUROPEAN CHALLENGE

In a dynamic and global market the innovation speed is a crucial facto r for competitiveness. Innovations are needed not only for products, b ut also and increasingly for production processes. This is also true f or software production. Considering that the software included in many products is providing an increasing portion of the whole added value and that in many countries, especially in Asia, there are emerging sof tware industries, then the European initiative called European Softwar e Process Improvement Training Initiative (ESPITI) is addressing the r ight subject at the right moment. This paper gives an overview of moti vations and intentions of the initiative.