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- People. People and the way they work together have a greater effect on the outcomes of a project than the processes they’re following or the products (tools and technologies) that they’re using. People issues include having visible executive sponsorship, building an environment of trust, empowering staff, focusing on leadership as well as management, recognizing that the primary gating factor when improving processes is people’s ability to absorb change, and promoting a cross-discipline strategy at both the team and individual levels.
- Principles/philosophies. We’ve found both internally within IBM as well as with many of our customers that there is a need to define a common set of principles to provide a consistent foundation to enable effective teamwork and continuous process improvement. These principles help to guide people’s decisions when their processes and practices don’t directly address the situation which they find themselves in.
- Practices/patterns. A practice is a self-contained, deployable component of a process. You might find the IBM Practices interesting.
- Products. This includes the technologies – such as databases, application servers, networks, and client platforms – and tools such as integrated development environments, testing tools, and project planning tools used to create solutions for stakeholders.
- Processes. The previous 4Ps do not exist in a vacuum, we need some sort of glue to help piece all of this together. Minimally this glue is a lifecycle although more often than not it is a full process or method.
My experience is that to be successful at software process improvement (SPI) across your entire IT department that you must address these 5Ps. How you address each issue, and to what extent, will vary based on your situation.
