Adoption-centric software maintenance process improvement via information integration

Software process improvement is an iterative activity, normally involving measurement, analysis, and change. For most organizations, the existing software process has substantial momentum and is seemingly immovable. Any change to existing process activities causes turbulence in the organization, which can be a significant barrier to adoption of the quality improvement initiative. This paper presents a quiescent, non-invasive, and adoption-centric approach to process improvement for software maintenance. The approach realizes the goal of improving the efficiency of existing processes by minimizing changes to existing work/flows and focusing on integrating enhancements at the micro-level of the system. By leveraging information buried in existing data, making it explicit, and integrating the results with known facts, more informed decision-making is made possible. The approach is illustrated with a model problem concerning redocumentation of an embedded control system in the context of performing higher-quality software maintenance.