Software process improvement in a financial organization: An action research approach

• The project of a major financial company process evolution is presented.
• A research methodology is presented and used during the software process improvement (SPI).
• All phases, processes and addressed issues are illustrated.
• A survey method is conceived and applied to the members of the SPI project.
• All aspects of the success factors of the implementation are presented and analyzed.

In order to increase the quality of systems of a financial company, the process of a software development team has changed some times to get stabilized. This paper presents the action research steps that were conducted, the perceptions of the team about the process evolution and the solved problems. Also, a software process improvement assessment has been conducted in order to identify the success factors on this implementation and the result is analyzed and discussed through the Servqual method. Among other conclusions, the involvement of the team during the improvement process and future perspectives are crucial to achieve success.