The SPICE Trials

About the Trials

The SPICE Project has been mandated by JTC1/SC7 (the software engineering standardisation committee of ISO/IEC) to:

assist the standardisation project in its preparatory stage to develop initial working drafts;
undertake empirical trials of ISO/IEC 15504 as it evolves through the various stages towards an International Standard;
create market awareness and take-up of the evolving standard

The empirical trials of ISO/IEC 15504 are known as the SPICE Trials. The SPICE Trials Team, are responsible for managing the organisation and running of these trials. The Trials have been conducted in three phases; the SPICE Project is now seeking participants for Phase 3 of the Trials.

Benefits for Participants

Participants in the SPICE Trials can expect to attain the following benefits:

Influence the emerging International Standard: The results of the SPICE Trials will be provided as input into the balloting process. All such comments will be formally addressed. Therefore, participants in the SPICE Trials can directly influence the content of the emerging International Standard through their experiences.

Customised benchmarking: All SPICE Trials participants will get a customised benchmark report. This report will provide their relative process capability compared with the capability of similar organisations (e.g., the same industrial sector, and the same region). This would allow the gauging of the competitiveness of an organisation’s software processes.

Early access to the SPICE Trials results: In the past, the SPICE Trials results have been found to be very useful by trials participants for improving their assessment practices and for strengthening the business case for conducting assessments. Trials participants will get early access to these results.

Support in conducting assessments: The Trials team will direct organisations to sources of information that can support them in conducting 15504-conformant assessments.

Conducting an assessment using ISO/IEC TR 15504

There are at least three important elements that you need for conducting an assessment:

An Assessment Model
An Assessment Method
One or more Competent Assessors

ISO/IEC TR 15504 defines a set of requirements for an Assessment Model and an Assessment Method in the normative parts of the document set (parts 2 and 3 respectively). An assessment that meets these requirements is referred to as a 15504-conformant assessment.

ISO/IEC TR 15504 also defines a Reference Model. The Reference Model defines the necessary rules that an Assessment Model must follow. An actual software process assessment is conducted using an Assessment Model, not the Reference Model.

The Reference Model that ISO/IEC TR 15504 defines is two-dimensional. The two dimensions are:

the process dimension, which is characterised by process purpose statements which are the essential measurable objectives of a process
the process capability dimension, which is characterised by a series of process attributes, applicable to any process, that represent measurable characteristics necessary to manage a process and improve its capability to perform.

This two-dimensional architecture is illustrated below. On the process dimension, the processes are grouped into five categories. On the process capability dimension, there are nine attributes, and these are grouped into five levels. The process attributes are features of a process that can be evaluated on a scale of achievement, providing a measure of the capability of the process.

There can be more than one Assessment Model that satisfies this architecture and its requirements. In the ISO/IEC TR 15504 there is a complete exemplar Assessment Model that can be used during an assessment. Additional Assessment Models that are claimed to be conformant to the above architecture and the requirements defined by ISO/IEC TR 15504 are being provided by vendors and service providers in the marketplace.

ISO/IEC TR 15504 does not define an explicit assessment method. It does, however, define the requirements for an assessment method. This means that there may be many assessment methods available, all of which meet these requirements. Right now, there are a number of organisations that provide public or commercial assessment methods that are claimed to meet the method requirements defined by ISO/IEC TR 15504.

ISO/IEC TR 15504 also defines informative criteria for a competent assessor. It is suggested that assessors involved in 15504-conformant assessments satisfy these assessor competence criteria.
There are a few additional requirements for 15504-conformant assessments that are defined in the normative parts of ISO/IEC TR 15504. These requirements are intended to ensure that good assessment practices are followed, and also to ensure consistency across all assessments that are based on ISO/IEC TR 15504.

The SPICE Trials

About the Trials

Benefits for Participants

Conducting an assessment using ISO/IEC TR 15504

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