Making the software factory work: Lessons from a decade of experience

At the heart of proposals to use process-oriented techniques for creating o rganizations that are capable of creating high-quality software at low cost is a focus on software process maturity, organizational learning to foster continuous improvement, and contractual arrangements that support an exclu sive focus on software construction activities, as opposed to a broader foc us on end-to-end development of an entire product. We study an organization that was to provide fast, low cost, high quality s oftware development services to product teams within Lucent Technologies. T he vision called for an organization with a culture distinct and isolated f rom the rest of Lucent, characterized by a commitment to a well-defined sof tware development process, use of state-of-the-art technology that fits int o the process, and use of various forms of feedback to recognize and take a dvantage of opportunities for process improvement. The organization has operated for nearly a decade now, and has evolved over the years as the basic principles have been put to the test in actual prod uct development work. We use a rich collection of data from interviews, que stionnaires, software metrics, and software process assessments to advance our knowledge of how to create and sustain an effective, medium-size proces s-centered software development organization.