An empirical evaluation of the process workshop approach

Electronic process guides are a commonplace for software organizations. Developing useful process guides is, however, often a difficult and laborious task. Process Workshop is an approach designed to facilitate the development of process guides. Yet, there is still little empirical knowledge available on the Process Workshop approach. This paper reports the empirical results of a case where the Process Workshop approach was used in a real setting. Based on the empirical results, the approach was found efficient in initiating the actual process design activities. The resulting processes were formed collectively based on rapid feedback from future process users and on face to face communication between development team experts. The results suggest that the process workshop approach may enhance the motivation of experienced developers who otherwise find traditional software process improvement activities less motivating. The Process Workshop, although not answering all the organization improvement needs, provides a good starting point for the process development work. Problems in the approach are identified and the respective lessons-learned are described.