Process assessment with a project focus

The author compares three process assessment techniques that measure improvement against the Software Engineering Institute's capability maturity model (CMM), particularly the Computer Science Corporation's software process audit method. The Software Engineering Institute has developed two approaches to determine an organization's process maturity: software process assessments (SPA) and software capability evaluations (SCA), both of which use the SEI's CMM as a yardstick. Computer Science Corporation's software process audit method addresses the major limitations of the SPA, ie. SPAs occur too infrequently to track progress; SPA results are reported at the organization, not project level; and SPAs direct process improvement at the organizational level. The process-audit approach at CSC focuses on projects, specifically their conformance to the organization's defined process. As such, a process audit fits between a SPA and an SCE.<
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