Software Process: Key Issues and Future Directions

Abstract

Software process technology is an emerging technology that is now reaching a reason-able degree of maturity. Although there remains some way to go before it achieves full maturity and general use, its potential for delivering products in an industrial context is already evident from the work presented here and in the preceding volume [Fink94]. The technology aims at supporting the software production process, by providing the means to model, measure, analyse and (where justified) to automate software produc-tion activities. We believe that it represents a key strategic technology for addressing the endemic problems of software process that were alluded to in the opening chapters, i.e. to deliver significant improvements in the productivity of the software development and in the quality of software products.

The contribution by Luuk Groenewegen has been partially supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).