Validating the ISO/IEC 15504 measures of software development process capability

ISO/IEC 15504 is an emerging international standard on software process ass essment. It defines a number of software engineering processes, and a scale for measuring their capability. A basic premise of the measurement scale i s that higher process capability is associated with better project performa nce (i.e., predictive validity). This paper describes an empirical study th at evaluates the predictive validity of the capability measures of the ISO/ IEC 15504 software development processes (i.e., develop software design, im plement software design, and integrate and test). Assessments using ISO/IEC 15504 were conducted on projects world-wide over a period of two years. Pe rformance measures on each project were also collected using questionnaires : such as the ability to meet budget commitments and staff productivity. Th e results provide evidence of predictive validity for the development proce ss capability measures used in ISO/IEC 15504 for large organizations (defin ed as having more than 50 IT staff). Furthermore, it was found that the "De velop Software Design" process was associated with most project performance measures. For small organizations evidence of predictive validity was rath er weak. This can be interpreted in a number of different ways: that the me asures of capability are not suitable for small organizations, or that soft ware development process capability has less effect on project performance for small organizations. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved .