A study on metrics for supporting the software process improvement based on SPICE

Software Process Improvement (SPI) is the set of activities with which an organization attempts to reach better performances on product cost, time-to-market and product quality, by improving the software development process. Changes are made to the process based on 'best practices': experiences of other, not necessarily similar organizations. Within SPI methodologies there is a focus on the software development process, because it is based on the assumption that an improved development process positively impacts product quality, productivity, product cost and time-to-market. This paper defines stan-dard metrics for quantitative measurement of quality indicators of processes through Software Process Assessment (SPA) based on SPICE. Through accom-plishment of this, we are able to control and to measure SPI activity, and pro-vide for a basis of quantitative S/W process management. The results of our re-search will represent a circulatory architecture for SPI and support of the risk management through the improvement activities and the Process Asset Library with collected and measured data.