Software process and product improvement: an empirical assessment

Despite all the attention that software process improvement (SPI) practices have received, there is no solid evidence of how extensively they are used across organizations, and their impact on quality, cost, and on-time deliv ery. The findings of previous studies are based on case studies, often asse ssing the effectiveness of a particular methodology in a large company. In our attempt to obtain a broader insight into the software process improveme nt practices, we conducted a survey targeted at software developers in New England. We collected 67 responses and used descriptive statistics to analy ze the survey results. In addition, we examined the impact of SPI methodolo gies on quality factors and compared the impact to the importance of qualit y factors for software developers. The Spearman correlation coefficient was used to determine the degree of correlation between the two. (C) 2000 Else vier Science B.V. All rights reserved.