Integrating software process assessment models using a process meta model

Software process improvement (SPI) is motivated by the need to increase the quality and productivity of software work. It is a widely accepted fact that the quality of the software product is largely determined by the quality of the process used to develop and maintain it. SPI requires knowledge of what is needed, awareness of what is feasible, and a long-term commitment to its investment. Software process assessment helps software organizations improve themselves by identifying their critical problems and establishing improvement priorities. The assessment takes place by comparing the state of the organization's software process against the model and the improvement scale. An assessment is usually based on a software process model and an improvement roadmap. The interest in software process improvement has created dozens of international software process models and standards. CMMI and SPICE are two most widely used process assessment models in the SPI work today. In order to help software companies, a SPI support tool is currently being developed. The SPI support tool guides the users through software process improvement, diminishing the need for continuous external consultations and assessors. Software process models form the central part of this support tool. In order to implement various process models into the support tool, the structure of the models should be analyzed and integrated into one common meta model. We have previously conducted conceptual analyses of SPICE and CMMI where the structure of both models has been studied. In this paper we describe the result of the conceptual synthesis of these process models-integration of SPICE and CMMI through a meta model. The integrated meta model contributes to a more complete process assessment, since it includes elements of various process models.