Taba Workstation: Supporting Software Process Improvement Initiatives Based on Software Standards and Maturity Models

International software standards and maturity models play an important role in Software Process Improvement initiatives defining best practices and providing knowledge to the definition of software processes. Nevertheless, the definition and deployment of software processes based on that standards and models is an expensive and knowledge intensive task. This paper describes an approach to the definition and deployment of software processes in small and medium size Brazilian companies supported by a Process-centered Software Engineering Environment named Taba Workstation. It also presents results related to a software process improvement initiative undertaken in a Brazilian organization that demonstrates the feasibility of the presented approach.