Towards software excellence—informal self‐assessment for software developers

Abstract

-"Towards Software Excellence" (TSE) is a web-based process assessment facility established by the UK's National Computing Centre (NCC). TSE provides software developers with a simple and easy-to-use means of self-assessing the capability of their development processes. They can understand the "good practice" expected by TSE, compare their processes against TSE's process model, identify their "strengths and weaknesses" and then use this knowledge to improve. TSE is especially suited to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), also to development teams or groups within larger organisations. It can provide a first step towards more formal CMM or SPICEbased assessments. Since 2003, over 1500 TSE assessments have been performed.The database of TSE assessments has been analysed to identify the overall strengths and weaknesses of its users' processes, as well as which processes and practices are of most interest to them. Good performing processes include Problem Resolution and Project Management, while low performing processes include Measurement and Process Improvement. TSE's users are most interested in assessing the performance of their "customer-facing" development and acquisition practices and least interested in assessing their improvement and legal practices.

An application tool to support the implementation of integrated software process improvement for Malaysia's SME

“…The health check tool also uses only ISO/IEC 15504 as base of reference [6]. Its practices are also consistent to ISO 9001 as interpreted by TickIT although it does not include it as one of the process model [7].…”