Process Assessment and Improvement: A Practical Guide for Managers, Quality Professionals and Assessors (The Springer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science)

Process Assessment and Improvement: A Practical Guide For Managers, Quality Professionals and Assessors provides the reader with a powerful and practical approach to improving their organization through process assessment, combined with people factors such as organizational culture and team based improvement. It is the first practical guidebook to the emerging ISO/IEC 15504 standard.

Process Assessment and Improvement: A Practical Guide For Managers, Quality Professionals and Assessors covers the three major business reasons for process assessment including setting Target Profiles, Process Capability Determination and Process Improvement in chapters 2 to 5. The book provides powerful figures on the costs of poor quality, and the benefits of improvement for organizations involved in software and IT. This book provides comprehensive improvement programs and also agile improvement methodologies, grounded in successful practices that have been employed in world class organizations.

Chapters 6 to 8 provide assessors with a standard assessment method and variants, plus how to rate a process up to ISO/IEC 15504 capability level 5. Chapter 9 describes industry experience using the standard. Useful examples, templates and tools are provided in Annexes. There is a companion book titled Process Assessment and ISO/IEC 15504: A Reference Book.

Process Assessment and Improvement: A Practical Guide, Second Edition, provides a powerful and practical approach to improving organizations through process assessment, combined with people factors such as organizational culture and team-based improvement. Originally published in 2004 as the first practical guide to the emerging ISO/IEC 15504 standard, this second edition presents an updated version of process assessments and includes new risk methods. This guide also offers a separate reference book entitled Process Assessment and ISO/IEC 15504: A Reference Book.

Process Assessment and Improvement: A Practical Guide, Second Edition, covers three major business reasons for process assessment: setting Target Profiles, Process Capability Determination, and Process Improvement.  Also provided are figures on the costs of poor quality and the benefits of improvement for organizations involved in software and IT. The comprehensive improvement programs and agile improvement methodologies presented in this book are grounded in successful practices employed in world class organizations. Useful examples, templates and tools are included.

Process Assessment and Improvement: A Practical Guide, Second Edition, is designed for a professional audience composed of researchers, libraries and practitioners in industry.  This guide is suitable for graduate-level students in computer science and engineering as well.