The BOOTSTRAP Institute is a non-profit organisation dedicated to continuous improvement of the BOOTSTRAP Methodology. Its work is funded through membership subscriptions and through the services it provides to its members, licensees, and to industries.
In the 1980s and early 1990s the Esprit programme followed a technology-push policy aimed at strengthening a growing IT industry. The new focus of IT RTD under the Fourth Framework programme is the emerging information infrastructure, which will provide the basis of the global information society of the future. The programme is in consequence to a greater extent led by the needs of users and the market. The overall objective is to contribute to the healthy growth of the information infrastructure so as to improve the competitiveness of all industry in Europe, not just the IT industry, and to help enhance the quality of life.
The programme emphasises ease of access to information, to services and technologies for companies, administrations, and individual citizens. Activities stress use and usability of technologies, and best practice. The RTD areas covered are those most vital to the development of the infrastructure, taking into account the need for selectivity and concentration of effort.
The main objectives of the programme have changed. Emphasis used to be placed on encouraging cooperation between IT enterprises and strengthening the Union's information technology industry. Now the focus is on helping to develop the services and technologies that underpin the emerging information society. To do this effectively means paying greater attention to the needs of users and the market.Our aim is to improve the competitiveness of all industry in the Union (not just the IT sector), and to help enhance the quality of life. This means:
Quality and productivity of software are the most important issues in the software industry today. The prime purpose of this research is to specify and test effective procedures for software quality engineering. Methods and tools for rigourous determination of the quality of software and the productivity of the software process are investigated in order to develop mission focussed improvement procedures. The activities are focussed on
ESPI Foundation's Mission - "To promote Software Process Improvement (SPI) and increased business performance across Europe. This will be achieved by representing the needs of corporate and public sector organisations in the practical implementation of SPI programmes."
The specific goals of ESPI Foundation are to:
European Software Institute is a major industry initiative, founded by leading European companies, to improve the competitiveness in the European Software Industry, including both suppliers and users. To this end ESI promotes and disseminates good software management practices. The European Software Institute is supported by the European Commission and the Basque Government.
This site provides wealth of information. Included are links to reports, products, publications, technologies. Those involved are working diligently to explore the issues related to developing quality systems, and provide an information repository regarding best practices and validating same. Should be visited often as it seems to be updated with regularity. (see also summary in SP Research)
The Software Program Managers Network is a DoD/DoN operated organization of Program Managers, staff, executives, and others interested in improving the practice of managing software development and maintenance. This site contains a number of items which apply to software process. In particular, there are pages for a series of issues panels. These issues panels include:
The mission of the QEB is to gather information and disseminate it to ITG management and staff in order to facilitate continuous improvement of software quality. We will work with each software development project to:
The Software Quality Institute (SQI) is a multidisciplinary partnership between The University of Texas at Austin and the software and information systems organizations in Texas. Its mission is to inform and educate software producers and software users at the local, state and national levels about issues vital to the production and application of high-quality software. SQI draws upon the wealth of research and expertise available at UT-Austin as well as from a large pool of outstanding talent from industry and government. The Software Quality Institute is a unit within Continuing Engineering Studies, College of Engineering.
The Software Engineering Process Office (SEPO) is the software engineering focal point for the Naval Command, Control, and Ocean Surveillance Center RDT&E Division (NRaD). SEPO provides software engineering processes and consulting services to projects, conducts and facilitates software engineering training, and acts as a software engineering clearinghouse for NRaD. Our goal is to keep NRaD competitive by providing capabilities to be a DoD leader in developing and acquiring quality software intensive systems.
Many large organizations are actively trying to find ways of producing better software at lower cost, within predictable resource allocations and time estimates. In recent years, it has been realized that the way to progress is to study and improve the wa y software is produced, while better technology only helps once the organizational framework is set. This discipline goes under the name of "Software Process Improvement" (SPI), and the reference for it is the work of the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
The book by W. S. Humphrey, "Managing the Software Process" is a good starting point to learn about the basic ideas behind this approach. SPI is based on statistical process control, defined in the `30s and used by Japanese industry after WW2, and by now in all industrial countries of the world. It is Total Quality Management applied to software.
This web page in conjuction with the CMML2 listserv has been provided to assist organizations moving to Level 2 of the CMM.
The Software Productivity Consortium was established by its member companies in 1985 to develop processes, methods, tools, and services that improve the design and implementation of high-quality, software-intensive systems.
Started in 1986, we are a community of software professionals from firms ranging to Buffalo and Syracuse. We are concerned with the investigation and discussion of topics in the area of software process improvement and quality assurance. We are guided by a Board of Directors which is attuned to the needs of software practitioners interested in improving the quality of software.
The purpose of the Rochester Software Quality Association organization is to promote process improvement in the field of software engineering.
Our primary objective is to establish a leadership forum and a network of resources for the open exchange of information to improve personal knowledge of software process improvement experiences and practices. The goal of this organization is to enhance, promote and achieve higher levels of process maturity and software quality in our respective companies.
The Software Process Improvement (SPI) Program, located in the Defense Information Systems Agency's Center for Software, is the Executive Agent for Software Process Improvement in DoD. The mission is to assist and energize information technology organizations to continuously improve the performance and quality of their software processes, products, and services. The mission is supported by products and services developed based on the frameworks of the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI) Software Process Assessment/Appraisal methodology and Capability Maturity Model (CMM).
To UMass Dartmouth
To CIS Department at UMass
Dartmouth
Comments should be sent to
Richard Upchurch (rupchurch@umassd.edu)
This document
Created: March 13, 1995
by RLU
Modified: March 18, 1998