Collaborative improvement of software processes

Abstract

To achieve high levels of product quality, organizations dealing with software development have massively invested in ways to improve their development processes. Many studies reporting factors that injluence the success of such initiatives point out to the relevance of social issues to succeed in adopting process improvement. This paper discusses the possibilities for collaboration support in helping organizations to reduce social barriers to process improvement and to establish a process culture among developers. The paper explores this idea by proposing a collaborative environment that aims to promote SPI initiatives. The environment is focused on the role of awareness support, since we believe it is a primary resource for software process improvements to achieve higher levels of group/collaboration and process consciousness.