Utilization of statistical process control (SPC) in emergent software organizations:: Pitfalls and suggestions

Common wisdom in the domain of software engineering tells us that companies should be mature enough to apply Statistical Process Control (SPC) techniques. Since reaching high maturity levels (in CMM or similar models such as ISO 15504) usually takes 5-10 years, should software companies wait years to utilize Statistical Process Control techniques? To answer this question, we performed a case study of the application of SPC techniques using existing measurement data in an emergent software organization. Specifically, defect density, rework percentage and inspection performance metrics are analyzed. This paper provides a practical insight on the usability of SPC for the selected metrics in the specific processes and describes our observations on the difficulties and the benefits of applying SPC to an emergent software organization.