Prescription, description, reflection: the shape of the software process improvement field

Bo Hansen, Jeremy Rose and Gitte Tjørnehøj

International Journal of Information Management, 2004, vol. 24, issue 6, 457-472

Abstract: This article reviews 322 representative contributions to the software process improvement (SPI) literature. The contributions are categorised according to a simple framework: whether their primary goal is prescriptive (to tell SPI professionals what to do), descriptive (to report actual instances of SPI programs in software organisations), or reflective (theoretically analytical). The field is found to be rather dominated by one approach (the capability maturity model (CMM)) and heavily biased towards prescriptive contributions. Neither of these trends is necessarily beneficial, and it is argued that more theoretically reflective contributions could encourage a diversity of approaches which might also benefit practitioners.

Keywords: Software process improvement; Capability maturity model; Literature review (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ininma:v:24:y:2004:i:6:p:457-472

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2004.08.007

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