Assessing software organizations from a complex systems perspective
José Javier Dolado, Álvaro Moreno‐Martínez · 2000
the words "software process improvement " are buzzwords in the software management activities. Assessments of the status of the software process in organizations are made by using models such as cmm, spice or iso 9000. We see some uses of those models as an example of the technological (or mechanical) paradigm that is trying to pervade most activities of software construction. We can consider some types of software products as the final outcome of human design processes. Thus, to use mechanical procedures as patterns to follow may not be the apropriate way for dealing with emergent structures. Looking at the biological area, a morphogenetic metaphor allows us to introduce the concepts of deducible emergence and hyperstructures. Thus, software processes could take many appearances, and improvement could be evaluated with respect to what extent processes allow intermediate structures to evolve and reach the final form. 1 Introduction Software is an element that can be considered complex from different perspectives, and the complexity that arises in software development has been acknowledged for some time. The phrase "software crisis " tries to reflect many of the problems that software development organizations face in their projects. One of the factors that has been blamed for the source of the obstacles in achieving a controlled project is the software process. However, the ideal normative process for development activities is still unknown. In this work we aim to link some of the concepts of the complex systems area to the management of software.