Measuring the impacts individual process maturity attributes have on software products

For over 20 years, the System Engineering and Analysis Support (SEAS) Center has been working with NASA in the development of Mission Operations and Data Systems software. In support of and in collaboration with NASA, SEAS has participated in numerous studies and activities designed to measure and analyze the quality of software products as well as the technologies and processes used to produce those products. This paper describes the approach, activities, data, and early results of studies attempting to more generally determine the impact that software processes have on the end item software products. Individual software process attributes as well as software process improvement as a whole is analyzed. The paper describes the approach to identifying project data for both the product and process and describes one aspect of the series of studies being carried out; the results of analyzing the relationship between project quality and a corresponding process rating derived from the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) in its Capability Maturity Model (CMM). The studies have taken place within the CSC/SEAS Center where software systems are developed and maintained in support of NASA flight projects.