Towards software excellence-informal self-assessment for software developers

‘Towards Software Excellence’ (TSE) is a web‐based facility established by the UK's National Computing Centre (NCC), a not‐for‐profit organisation dedicated to helping IT users and providers implement effective information technology. TSE provides software developers with a simple and easy‐to‐use means of self‐assessing their development processes. Its users can understand the practices expected by TSE, identify the ‘strengths and weaknesses’ of their current practice, and then use this knowledge to improve. TSE is especially suited to small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) and development teams or groups within larger organisations. It can provide a first step towards more formal Capability Maturity Model (CMM) or SPICE‐based assessments. TSE's definition of best practice is based on the ISO15504 standard. Once registered, users can log on to the website as many times as they wish to complete their assessment—they don't have to enter all the information at once or cover all processes and practices. Explanations of TSE's best practices can be examined and a ‘gap analysis’ report for the user's assessment can be produced. With financial support from the UK government and promotional support from trade and professional associations, over 1500 users have performed TSE assessments during 2002. As well as helping its users to identify process improvements, the TSE initiative has started to create overall profiles of the strengths and weaknesses of the practices declared by its users. Analysis of the initial set of TSE assessments has identified the generally best and worst performing processes and practices of its users and also those practices that have generated the most and least interest. For example, good performing topics include problem resolution and project management, while low performing topics include verification and measurement. TSE users are most interested in assessing the performance of their development and acquisition practices and least interested in assessing their improvement and legal practices. As use builds up, it is hoped that regular comparison of overall strengths and weaknesses of development practice declared by users will become possible, and the general improvement of process capability for software development can be tracked. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.