Key success factors of a regional software process improvement programme

This article views the situation of software process improvement (SPI) activities in two neighbouring European countries, Estonia and Finland, with the aim to point out the prerequisites of a country prior to implementing the SPI activities. The authors compare SPI activities in Finland and Estonia and analyse the reasons for the differences in the two countries. Through a comparison of the SPICE related SPI activities, the necessary prerequisites are derived which a country should fulfil prior to the implementation of SPI. After reading this article, the reader should have an idea about what needs to be done before successful implementation of a software process improvement programme.