Software Process Improvement

This was the ?rst year that the European Software Process Improvement Conference - EuroSPI - had a separate research track with its own proceedings.The EuroSPI conf- ence is in its eleventh year, and has become the main meeting place in Europe for the software industry and academia to discuss software process improvement. The conf- ence deals with software process improvementin a broad sense, investigatingorgani- tional issues as well as methods and tools for software process improvement. EuroSPIisaninitiative?nancedbyaconsortiumofNordicresearchcentersanduser networks(SINTEF,DELTAandSTTF),ASQF, aGermanqualityassuranceassociation, and ISCN in Ireland, the coordinating network partner. The research papers describe innovative and signi?cant work in software process improvement, which is relevant to the software industry. The papers are readable for a scienti?c and industrial audience, and support claims with appropriately described evidence or references to relevant literature. Thirty-one papers were submitted in this year's research track, and each paper was sent to three or four members of the programcommittee or additional reviewers.Papers were evaluated according to originality, signi?cance of the contribution, quality of the written and graphical presentation, research method applied, and appropriateness of comparison to relevant research and literature. Almost 100 reviews were received and 18 papers were selected for presentation in the research track, giving a rejection rate of 42%. Many high-quality submissions had to be rejected because of limited space in the conference program. The selected papers cover a wide area in software process improvement, from - provingagile developmentmethods, techniquesfor software processimprovement,and knowledgemanagementin software companiesto effort estimation and global software development.