Establishing continuous assessment using measurements

Software process assessments have become commonplace in the software industry. Assessments are sometimes regarded, however, as too infrequent, expensive and disruptive. Hence, there is a clear need for alternative ways to assess the current status of software processes and monitor the implementation of improvement activities. An assessment of software processes is based on finding indicators for establishing whether certain processes exist and how well they are performed. Based on the assessment outcome, improvement actions will be identified and guided with appropriate measurements. The software process (re-) assessment can be supported and made more frequent by using data from these measurements, and thus reducing the cost of the assessment. In the European project PROFES (PROduct-Focused Improvement of Embedded Software processes) an integrated, product-focused process improvement methodology has been developed and tested in the industrial partner sites. Among other things, PROFES integrates process assessment and software measurement to enable continuous assessment. This paper shows how this combination of assessment and measurement was done in practice. It also describes examples of measurements and their connection to the assessment method.