How does training support software process improvement in organizational changes?

In rapidly changing software industry the organizations have to adjust their processes to meet the changes. Software process improvement (SPI) is a continuous effort in software organizations, which aims at improving the organization´s processes and quality of products and services. However, an organization needs to either initiate SPI efforts or adjust them to organizational changes, such as growth, internationalization, mergers and acquisitions, and adoption of standards or process improvement frameworks. Often, the changes affect software processes and require making modifications to processes. Software industry is knowledge-intensive business and emphasizes human capital. Employees need to be motivated, aware, and trained to SPI in order to be capable and keen on improvement work. The research problem in this paper is how does training support software process improvement in organizational changes? We have analyzed process improvement and training activities in three different SPI and training related research projects within period of 1999-2011. The organizations´ interests and reasoning towards SPI, improved processes, and trainings that support process improvement have been studied. Our findings show that training can be used to support SPI, to increase understanding of processes and process improvement, and to adjust organizations´ SPI to changes.