Software quality improvement initiatives are frequently attempted inside major software development companies. These initiatives often face difficulty motivating managers and developers. Yet the success of these improvement initiatives is directly related to receiving support from them. A defect-driven improvement process is proposed, aiming to improve the adoption of techniques by these key groups. The process is based on using defect data to identify issues in the current development process. ABB has used this process to focus and motivate change in three major development organizations around the world. Results show that this process yields measurable improvements in organizations that have been reluctant to change in the past.

Process improvement efforts based on best practices and standards such as the CMMI use appraisal results as input and focus on implementing processes as described in reference models. Since these models are of a general character the conclusions from the assessments could easily overlook problems experienced in the daily work. In addition, process improvement programs often fail to engage practitioners. To improve this, data that can be related to the daily work can help. This paper reports on the results from a study performed to understand how process data can complement project appraisals in finding improvement possibilities. A method for mapping process data to different practices and combining this with project appraisals to form a basis for focused performance improvement is proposed and a study including four projects from three organizations is presented.