Process assessments in NASA

A software process assessment procedure, recently refined by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), gives managers a useful tool to identify the strengths and weaknesses of software organizations. The author discusses how process assessment techniques were introduced to NASA and how the procedure was enlarged to evaluate not just software development but also software quality assurance operations. Initially, the techniques were extended to cover contract management and especially software quality assurance organizations. A preliminary assessment tool (questionnaire) consisting of 98 items was introduced. After some revision, it demonstrated its usefulness at a series of on-site surveys. The combined surveys demonstrated that a NASA questionnaire can point a team in the right direction