Alignment between the business strategy and the software processes improvement: A roadmap for the implementation

The actions for the improvement of the software products and processes, for a better achievement of the organization business objectives, must be related to competitive market strategies. This paper describes the process of developing a roadmap for the support planning and implementation of the strategies of software companies. The roadmap allows to interpret of strategic objectives and to analyze the investments in software processes. The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) and the Practical Software Measurement (PSM) are the basis of roadmap proposed in this paper. Based on these grounds the roadmap basis was developed. This roadmap has been evaluated and improved through action research, developed in a specialized software company in financial segment. The implementation of the methodological stages resulted in the definition of strategic map and its development studied in the organization. The management requirements training has been prioritized as an action-plan to minimize the lack of scope definition identified in the process. The final outcome of this study is a roadmap which allows the implementation of strategic alignment of business and the improvement of processes in software companies. The proposed study showed that the investment in management requirements training leaded directly to the increase of the organization billing.