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SDLC Process Assessment and Improvement Models
SDLC Process Assessment and Improvement Models
2. RESEARCH QUESTION
SPI has been a problematic mission to carry out successfully, as already discussed and also stated by many other researchers (e.g. Ould 1996, Kasse and McQuaid 1998, Kinnula 1999). By nature, software development is human-based and complex. Software engineering has features that cannot be planned or controlled similarly to some other fields of engineering. It is, at the same time, an intellectual and a sociological design activity carried out in an environment of learning (Ould 1996). The intangible and complex nature of software engineering makes planning and controlling difficult. Reel (1999, p. 19) has determined the
How to develop and evaluate industrial SPI methods? This leads to the following research questions: Q1. What are the most typical industrial SPI needs regarding SPI methods? Q2. What kinds of SPI methods are suited to these needs?
SDLC PROCESS IMPROVEMENT MODELS Q3. How to gather and analyze the practical experiences of SPI methods in order to develop them further?
The fundamental assumption of this research is that the quality of software depends on the characteristics of the processes used for producing the software as stated by (Humphrey 1989).
3. LITERATURE REVIEW
The role of software is today more important than ever, and its importance is continually increasing. The functionality and parallel versions of products realized by software have increased greatly along with the rising significance of software quality. Software has become a strategic core technology and an inseparable part of many systems (cf., e.g. Seppnen et al. 1996). The amount and complexity of software have also increased enormously, while at present the functionality and customization of many systems is often realized by software. In addition, market requirements have led to tightened lead-time requirements, i.e. software should be produced more and more rapidly. Unfortunately, this combination can cause a great amount of quality problems. 3.1 Software Development Strategies The world of software development is changing radically with accelerated speed (Wang & King 2000). In addition to technological and methodological changes the business strategies of software development have been changing and are changing remarkably as well. In the 1980s, software development was exclusively in-house activity, and no commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) were known (Niemel et al. 2000), not to mention the Open Source development approach (Fuggetta 2003), which is one of the most recent strategies used for enhancing software development. Through these changes, companies
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