A note on the evolution of software engineering practices

This paper describes how software development process naturally evolves. Items taken from an early version of the SEI's CMM questionnaire are shown to make up a linear scale that describes how software development and management practices are introduced in a software production organization. Analysis of this scale shows that when software practices are inadequately or incompletely implemented, they are refined in several iterations. This observation implies that such repetitive refinements of software practices can be estimated and that it may be possible to correct inadequate or incomplete initial implementations and shorten the cycle between refinement steps and thus accelerate the software process evolution. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.