POSITION STATEMENT ON SOFTWARE PROCESS INNOVATIONS AND INFORMAL ORGANIZATIONAL NETWORKS

The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University spawned the software process improvement industry about six years ago with their initial version of the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) for software. This position statement outlines my research agenda after reviewing many software development organizations over the last few years. Most software development organizations are engaged in some type of program of software process improvement. The inattention paid to the informal organization is identified as a weakness in many of these software process improvement programs. Additionally, a decomposition of what constitutes a software process innovation is presented as a precursor for developing a research model of process innovations covering all software development activities.