This informative book is designed to help professionals involved with development of software or systems manage process improvement initiatives within their company by explaining the history, method and psychology behind AFA.

On behalf of the PROFES organizing committee we are proud to present to you the proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Product Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2004), held in Kansai Science City, Japan. Since 1999, PROFES has established itself as one of the recognized international process improvement conferences. In 2004 the conference left Europe for the first time and moved to Japan. Japan and its neighboring countries are intensifying their efforts to improve software engineering excellence, so it was a logical step to select Japan as the venue for PROFES 2004. The purpose of the conference is to bring to light the most recent findings and results in the area and to stimulate discussion between researchers, experienced professionals, and technology providers. The large number of participants coming from industry confirms that the conference provides a variety of up-to-date topics and tackles industry problems. The main theme of PROFES is professional software process improvement (SPI) motivated by product and service quality needs. SPI is facilitated by software process assessment, software measurement, process modeling, and technology transfer. It has become a practical tool for quality software engineering and management. The conference addresses both the solutions found in practice and the relevant research results from academia. This is reflected in the 41 full papers, which are a balanced mix of academic papers as well as industrial experience reports.

On behalf of the PROFES organizing committee we would like to welcome you to the 4th International Conference on Product Focused Software Process Impro- ment (PROFES 2002) in Rovaniemi, Finland. The conference was held on the Arctic Circle in exotic Lapland under the Northern Lights just before Christmas time, when Kaamos (the polar night is known in Finnish as ”Kaamos”) shows its best characteristics. PROFES has established itself as one of the recognized international process improvement conferences. Despite the current economic downturn, PROFES has attracted a record number of submissions. A total of 70 full papers were subm- ted and the program committee had a di?cult task in selecting the best papers to be presented at the conference. The main theme of PROFES is professional software process improvement (SPI) motivated by product and service quality needs. SPI is facilitated by so- ware process assessment, software measurement, process modeling, and techn- ogy transfer. It has become a practical tool for quality software engineering and management. The conference addresses both the solutions found in practice and the relevant research results from academia.

Taking you beyond the Capability Maturity Model- to the integrated world of systems and software, this comprehensive resource presents CMMI- Version 1.2 in a manner that is easy to comprehend by higher-level managers and practitioners alike. Written by a world-renowned expert in the field, the book offers a clear picture of the activities an organization would be engaged in if their systems and software engineering processes were based on CMMI-."

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement, PROFES 2019, held in Barcelona, Spain, in November 2019. The 24 revised full papers 4 industry papers, and 11 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 104 submissions. The papers cover a broad range of topics related to professional software development and process improvement driven by product and service quality needs. They are organized in topical sections on testing, software development, technical debt, estimations, continuous delivery, agile, project management, microservices, and continuous experimentation. This book also includes papers from the co-located events: 10 project papers, 8 workshop papers, and 4 tutorial summaries.

Annotation ISO 9001 is known throughout the world as the gold standard for quality process improvement, but lately quality assurances experts are discovering the power of CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration), the latest process improvement model to hit the scene. This book explores how these two models can be used together to improve process quality by quantum leaps.