Assessment Tools as Drivers for SPI: Short-term Benefits and Long-term Challenges

Full scale software process maturity assessments are costly, can have large organizational impact, and are carried out at long (12-24 months) intervals. Consequently, there is a need for techniques and tools to monitor and help manage an SPI project through inexpensive, ongoing progress assessment. In this paper we present findings from two cases of using such a tool We have found that the tool does provide useful snapshots of the status of an SPI projects, but that long-term use of the tool introduces costs and challenges related to modifying and tailoring the tool to both the organizational context and the SPI implementation approach. Also, persistent use of an assessment tool may jeopardize assessment reliability due to wear-out and routinization.