Software process improvement as an organizational self-production process

Software companies are a growing trend in world economy. They are in charge of most IT related developments and, in order to deliver proper products to their customers, they have to improve their organization. Software Process Improvement (SPI) is a key factor that allows software companies to grow and improve. This process has been mainly treated as technical, leaving aside the human and organizational factors. It has to be managed as an organizational change. Also organizations can be seen as living organisms that grow and evolve based on the idea of autopoiesis or self-producing systems. If a software company is understood as an autopoietic system, the SPI can be seen as a self-producing process. The goal of this work is to provide a first approach in the understanding of SPI as a part of the organization self-production process and provide new insights to managers in the SPI implementation and success.