Organizational factors shaping software process improvement in small-medium sized software teams: a multi-case analysis.

Allison, I.

Abstract

Previous work looking at software process improvement (SPI) in small organizations has highlighted difficulties faced by small organizations in implementing SPI successfully, but there is little analysis to understand why this is from an organization theory perspective. This paper presents an analysis of SPI across six software teams in the UK using a framework based on Giddens Structuration Theory. Using a structurational perspective helps to draw out how the process improvements are enabled and constrained by their context. By comparing these across the six situations the key similarities and differences across the cases are highlighted. This work extends the existing literature by helping to identify the areas of risk that need managing in small SPI initiatives. The study shows the issues as pertained to the six contexts and actions in each case. The paper highlights how the context influences the outcome.

Citation

ALLISON, I. 2010. Organizational factors shaping software process improvement in small-medium sized software teams: a multi-case analysis. In Proceedings of the 7th International conference on the quality of information and communications technology (QUATIC 2010), 29 September - 2 October 2010, Porto, Portugal. Los Alamitos: IEEE Computing Society [online], article number 5655656, pages 418-423. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1109/QUATIC.2010.81

• Conference Name: 7th International conference on the quality of information and communications technology (QUATIC 2010)
• Conference Location: Porto, Portugal
• Start Date: Sep 29, 2010
• End Date: Oct 2, 2010
• Acceptance Date: Oct 31, 2010
• Online Publication Date: Oct 31, 2010
• Publication Date: Dec 31, 2010
• Deposit Date: Nov 5, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 5, 2014
• Publisher: IEEE Computer Society
• Article Number: 5655656
• Pages: 418-423
• ISBN: 9780769542416
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/QUATIC.2010.81
• Keywords: Keywords; Software process improvement; Small medium enterprises; Structuration Theory
• Public URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10059/1065