Improving Software Practice

Improving Software Practice Case Experiences Edited by Colin Tully Colin Tully Associates, UK The software process is a business-critical process for many organizations. For them, improving software practice is both an imperative and a continuing challenge, to achieve success and even survival. This applies whether the organization develops software as its main business, embeds software in its products, or depends on software to underpin its business operations. This book presents case histories of eight very different organizations, each engaged in improving its software practice. Each organization has made its own individual evaluation of where its improvement priority lies, but they all share common experiences of what must be done in order to succeed in improving practice. Any software manager or practitioner facing the need for improvement will learn from these real-life stories, recounted by those who have been there already, seen the opportunities, and struggled with the problems.
No two companies are the same, or should adopt a standard approach; but there are common lessons to be shared, and this book exposes many of those common lessons in a way that is both readable and convincing. This book documents the following: Eight case studies that give an insight into software process improvement in the business environment Experience from various aspects of software process improvement Coverage of all parts of the complete software lifecycle. Produced and funded within the framework of the ESSI initiative of the European Commission is Programme.