A Measurement Framework to Support Continuous Improvement in Software Intensive Organizations

This paper presents a quantitative management framework for continuous improvement initiatives to ensure the sustainability of earnings and value in software intensive organizations (SIO). Three groups of measures are proposed to monitor the impact of changes introduced by continuous improvement initiatives: a network of dashboards, a performance measurement system (PMS) and a strategy management system (SMS). The proposed framework was experimented in two small organizations with tailored quantitative models and tools to support decision making at all levels of management.