1 Introduction

Research into the software process has acquired great importance over the last few years due to the growing interest of software companies in improving their quality. Software processes have an important influence on the quality of the final software product, and for this reason companies are becoming more and more concerned about software process improvement, when looking to improve their final products. Software applications are very complex products, and this fact is directly related to their development and maintenance processes.

The software process is therefore a process, with special characteristics stemming from the particular complexity of the software products obtained. To support software process evaluation and improvement, a great variety of initiatives have arisen establishing reference frameworks: CMM (SEI, 1995), CMMI (SEI, 2002), the ISO 15504 (ISO/IEC 1998) standard. Process improvement has also been incorporated into the new family of ISO 9000:2000 (ISO/IEC 2000a; 2000b) standards that promote the adoption of a focus based on processes when developing, implementing or improving a quality management system. Among the above-mentioned improvement initiatives, CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) stands out as being especially important. Within the context of CMMI, the company should continuously understand, control and improve its processes, in order to reach the aims of each level of maturity. As a result of effective and efficient processes, a company will, in return, receive high quality products that...