Process Improvement Patterns Discussion

Please use this page to rant or rave about/against the merits of trying to conduct any kind of formal process improvement effort, or of trying to document ProcessImprovementPatterns here on the Wiki.

About 2-3 years ago, I began work on some patterns for Initiating Software Process Improvement. I tried to develop a pattern language called I-SPI (pronounced "I Spy" like the old TV show and children's game). It started when I was basically just trying to flesh out one pattern named "Process follows Practice" and more and more patterns started jumping out of the woodwork as I tried to flesh out the details.

I ended up with a candidate list of about 40 patterns/principles and documented about a dozen of them for PLOP97 [1]. The original (and woefully incomplete) attempt at the language is still on the WWW at http://www.enteract.com/~bradapp/docs/i-spi/ but I never finished it. It got to be too much effort for me to do by myself and I really wanted to move on to documenting Software Configuration Management Patterns.

Someone suggested I put what I have on the Wiki and see if interested parties are willing and able to fill on the holes, fix the problems, and finish up the language (or at least get further than I ever did). Frankly Im not sure how receptive the Wiki would be for such an effort. I dont have the time or inclination to "champion" I-SPI anymore. But if someone else is interested in taking the baton and running with it, please feel free (and please drop me an email if you do). --BradAppleton

I'm interested in the area and think what's there is a good start. I'm not prepared to "champion" it, but would be interested in participating, and would commit to do so without pro/opponentry, insofar as I'm capable. Having been through Cope et al's PatternWritingWorkshop?, I at least know the rules, and will try to live by them. --RonJeffries