2.7 Who Cares About SPI?

Some of the people who care about SPI include software quality assurance personnel and SPI analysts, managers, and directors. Senior software engineering managers sometimes care about SPI. The field of software quality assurance is the predecessor or early prototype for the field of SPI. Software quality assurance analysts help select software engineering standards, life cycles, and methodologies. They help define software processes and ensure that software project management processes are properly executed. This makes software quality assurance analysts ideal champions of SPI. The fact that SPI professionals care about SPI does not have to be repeated. Senior software engineering managers care about SPI as well. They are concerned with operational excellence and satisfying customer standards. They are primarily responsible for ensuring that organizations achieve compliance with general-purpose process improvement criteria. Unfortunately, the list of people who care about SPI doesn't include the two most important parties. Software engineers and business unit managers, directors, and vice presidents rarely embrace the principles of SPI. Software engineers often view SPI as irrelevant, bothersome, and counterproductive. It is ironic that SPI is the exact opposite . SPI is highly relevant; it is designed to make life easier not harder, and to enhance productivity, not hinder it. Perhaps software engineers are merely reacting to poorly implemented SPI methods . Perhaps they just lack fundamental education. Maybe, in fact, SPI needs to be transparent to them. Business unit managers, directors, and vice presidents tend to be concerned with growing their businesses. This usually leads them to hire more people, shuffle political resources, and cut costs sharply. Business unit managers, directors, and vice presidents benefit the most from SPI.