The benefits of software process improvement (SPI) methods come from increased quality and thus decreased software maintenance and total life cycle costs. That is, most popular SPI methods are specifically designed to increase the quality of the software product. Many popular SPI methods are software quality management systems, because they are designed to improve quality. What strategy will we use for determining the benefits of any one SPI method? We will determine what the software maintenance and total life cycle costs are before and after introduction of the SPI method. That is, first we will determine what the software maintenance and total life cycle costs are before introduction of the SPI method. Then we will determine what the software maintenance and total life cycle costs are after introduction of the SPI method.

The only issue is to determine whether the new and old software maintenance and total life cycle costs include testing costs. That is, does the software organization have a rigorous software testing process? We will assume the software organization does not have a rigorous software testing process, which is most likely the case. Without testing, the software maintenance and total life cycle costs are much higher. Likewise, we can assume the software organization does have a rigorous software testing process, which is probably not the case. With rigorous testing, the software maintenance and total life cycle costs are much lower. Thus, if good software testing is already in place, then the benefits are much lower. If good software...