Software quality and software process improvement in teleworking environments

  • Hong Guo

    Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis

    Abstract

    Telework as a swift developing business has attracted great attention from government, company and organisation due to its large benefits for out society. A study was accordingly conducted to investigate its application in the IT industry. Results show that teleworking is widely accepted by and plays an important role in software industry. With the rapid development in computer and telecommunications technology, telework has become increasingly popular and can not be avoided in IT industry. the benefits and problems brought by teleworking in IT industry are then reported in the study. It is found that the big obstruction for telework development in software engineering is still product quality problems. As many researchers have revealed, our society has entered the information society. The demand for more and more software products with better and better quality is increasing. However problems of software quality hinder the development of the IT industry. The recognised reason for this is the inability to manage the software process. Hence, many software process assessment and improvement models have been developed and used successfully in the management of software development in order to acquire improvements in software quality. However, the problem considered here is whether they are suitable for telework software development. To build the necessary ground knowledge for carrying out this project, an extensive analysis of the fundamental methodology and principles of existing software process assessment and improvement models was conducted. The strengths and weaknesses of these models are derived from the analysis. The applicability and adaptability of the models for teleworking environments are also explored. It is found that the existing models are designed for centralised software development. They are not fully suitable but the same functions are applicable for teleworking environments. The results of above discussion lead to the selection and recommendation of SPICE to be used as a baseline for the development of a process approach which meets the need of teleworking software environments. To lay a solid foundation for the development of such approach, two surveys were carried out. Their aims are investigate the current state of telework in IT industry and the applicability of the present models in teleworking environments, and to identify the specific issues which arise in telework. It can be observed from the survey that there are significant differences in software process and management methodologies between telework and conventional single-site work. Special technologies are needed to support telework software development. To provide valuable input in the development of such approach, an in-depth analysis of the specific requirements identified from the survey results in the creation of a set of processes and base practices, which are particularly required by teleworking environments. The SPITE approach, which is a SPICE extension model, is therefore developed as a major contribution to the software industry that fills an important gap in the software process modelling. Good comments have been obtained from a small range of organisations.
    Date of Award2001
    Original languageEnglish
    Awarding Institution
    • Nottingham Trent University

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