Continuous process improvement in software organizations utilizing maturity models

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2017
Uskarcı, Algan
During the last two decades, staged process maturity models have been successfully used by software organizations for process improvement. However, the subject of how effective these models are in terms of organization-wide continuous process improvement has not been extensively studied. This study aims to fill this gap by performing a multiple case study to answer questions such as “Are software process improvement activities continuous?”, “Is there an organization wide commitment to process improvement activities?”, “Do the process improvement activities cover all process areas of software development?”, and “What is the relationship between the process improvement contribution and an employee's education, experience and role?”. The applied case study methodology consists of three phases. First, the process improvement suggestions submitted by target organizations’ employees are analyzed from three aspects, namely the submitter, timing, and content characteristics. In the second phase, the employees’ perception regarding the organization-wide continuous process improvement activities are analyzed. The third phase validates the findings of previous two phases by the help of qualitative interviews performed with the organization members. The multiple case study shows that there are shortcomings with respect to organization-wide continuous process improvement. Based on these findings, improvement opportunities for staged models are discussed. 

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Citation Formats
A. Uskarcı, “Continuous process improvement in software organizations utilizing maturity models,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2017.