Summary of Lightweight Process Improvement

Light-weight process improvement, LPI) it is a kind of "software process improvement" that focuses on the current situation and problems that are common in the software development process of Small and Medium teams, such as low-tech management, lack of R & D management specifications, and weak process improvement concepts. methods and specifications ", there are a large number of Lightweight Process Improvement domains, which provide some reference for Small and Medium-sized teams to continuously improve their software process capabilities. The content organization should be as universal as possible, but the personal level and experience are limited, many improvement domains may be limited to specific teams and scenarios. You need to crop and expand them based on the current situation of your teams.

I. Lightweight Process Improvement

Lightweight Process Improvement references mainstream R & D management concepts and models in the industry, including Pace, IPD, cmme, scrum, XP, lean, and PMBOK, I personally think that these concepts and models have their own uniqueness, but they also have their own limitations. For example, pace and IPD are mainly oriented to large teams and must be closely integrated with work models at the organizational level such as team performance, small and Medium teams are usually not suitable. The cmme model only answers the question "What should the process of software reach XX level?" and does not explain how to do it to reach XX level ", the implementation process of Small and Medium-sized teams needs to be simplified and tailored. The SCRUM model seems simple, but the Team requirements are too high. It is difficult to achieve the desired results. XP focuses on engineering practices, the management theory system is not perfect. Lean is still in the research and improvement stage of the theoretical system, and lacks specific operational modes and tools. PMBOK focuses on universal project management, instead of managing the software development process.

A startup team or a team in urgent need of process improvement usually does not recommend or copy any of the above models. However, it is necessary to combine the actual situation of the team to develop a wide range of ideas. This is also the idea of LPI. The lightweight meaning here is that our practice is as simple as possible to ensure that it can be recognized and widely promoted by the team, and our goal is not to achieve 100 points, it is a process from failing to 60 points. If we can see the problem from the perspective of 60 points on a day, then we may adopt other models to help us improve the process at a higher level.

2. Improved domain

Lightweight Process improvement is neither a complete model nor a solution. It focuses on "improvement", that is, proposing a methodology and practice model for solving problems from the problems existing in the R & D team, the problems come from all aspects of the R & D team. I personally sort these problems into five categories:

• Product Management: involves the strategy, platform and planning management of product design, as well as product research and demand analysis.
• Project management: covers the entire process from project initiation to project acceptance, including scope, plan, and customer satisfaction.
• R & D Management: covers the entire process from acquiring requirements to service delivery, mainly including system design, development, and testing.
• Operation Management: involves service release, marketing, and customer request management.
• Team Management: involves team formation, training, collaboration, and process asset construction.

The above five categories cover the main areas of work that require process improvement in a R & D team. In each category, we further segment the specific scope of improvement based on the nature and content of the work. In this article, a total of 20 improvement domains are sorted out, including:

Product Management	Improved domain description
Efficient Decision-Making	How to make effective decisions to facilitate the team to reach an agreement on product development for Analysis and Improvement
Product Platform	Analyze and improve how to create a product platform to promote stable product construction
Standardized Management	Analysis and Improvement on how to promote rapid development and project implementation through product standardization management
Demand Development	Analyze and improve requirements and development for specific products
Project Management	Improved domain description
Project startup	Analyze and improve how to effectively start a project from a sales line to a project line
Project Plan	Analyze and improve how to create and manage the project scope and time
Demand management	Analyze and improve demand research and demand management
Project monitoring	Analyze and improve demand changes, issue tracking, and risk management
Customer Acceptance	Analyze and improve product test run and Acceptance
R & D Management	Improved domain description
System integration	Analysis and Improvement on efficient integration in multi-user and multi-system development environments
Technical Review	Analyze and improve the R & D process and code quality control on how to use technical reviews
Configuration Management	Analyze and improve version control and baseline Management
Quality assurance	Analyze and improve product and process quality assurance
Quantitative Management	Analyzes and improves information transparency and Development metrics in the R & D process
Operation Management	Improved domain description
Service Operation *	Analyze and improve how to efficiently collect and analyze user data and promote product optimization
Customer Service Management *	Analyze and improve efficient response, statistics, and analysis of customer requests
Team Management	Improved domain description
Cross-functional teams	Analysis and Improvement on how to create, build and manage R & D teams
Team Training	Analyze and improve how to carry out team training and improve the overall combat effectiveness of the team
Process asset Construction	Analyze and improve the process assets and management team knowledge of how to build a team
Team collaboration	Analysis and Improvement on how to conduct and ensure efficient collaboration between R & D teams

* Compared with enterprise applications, operation management and customer service management are more focused on Internet-oriented product management.

Each improved domain is organized using the following simple structure:

• Introduction to main concepts and procedures of domain Improvement
• Status Quo and Problem Analysis
• Improvement entry point and ideas
• Improved models and practices

With the analysis, expansion, and summarization of the improved domain, documents and process assets may need to be sorted out. corresponding descriptions are also provided in each improved domain and brief template descriptions are provided.

Iii. Roles and responsibilities

The Lightweight Process improvement mainly involves the R & D team and the departments and teams outside the R & D team. Every improvement domain mentioned in this article is based on the R & D team's perspective, the role of the R & D team is its primary role, but it may also include some cooperative and non-R & D team roles. The main roles and responsibilities of the R & D team are summarized as follows:

• Process Improvement Team: analyzes, plans, and crops the process improvement model based on the current situation of the team, and promotes and implements specific process improvement measures in the team. The Process Improvement Team is similar to Speg in cmme. This article describes how to perform Lightweight Process improvement from the perspective of the Process Improvement Team.
• Project Manager: is the main person in charge of the project management process improvement domain. The project manager and project implementer in the team constitute the project management team, which is abstracted as the unified role of the Project Manager.
• Product Manager: is the main person in charge of the product management process improvement domain. The product manager and requirement analyst in the team constitute the product management team, which is abstracted as the unified role of product manager.
• Operation Manager: The operation manager usually works closely with the product manager and may belong to the product management team. However, it can also form an independent operation management team, which is the main owner of the Operation Management Improvement domain. Some organizations may divide operation teams and R & D teams into two independent teams, but their work models are similar.
• Developer: all the technical personnel in the team, including the designers and coding personnel.
• Testing personnel: generally refers to the testing personnel in the team. Here, the testing personnel (QC) and quality assurance personnel (QA) are distinguished. In reality, one person may assume two roles at the same time.
• Quality Assurance personnel: conduct "process and product quality inspection" on a regular or irregular basis, track quality problems, and provide quality improvement measures.
• Configuration Management Personnel: Generally, other roles can act concurrently. They are mainly responsible for maintaining the central configuration library and managing Configuration items and baselines.

The main roles and responsibilities of the peripheral team are summarized as follows:

• Customer service team: the customer service team will interact with the product team and the Quality Assurance team. It is oriented to end users and is responsible for collecting various requests, problems, and feedback from users on the product.
• Marketing team: the marketing team interacts with the Operation Management Team in the R & D team to promote products.
• Sales team: the sales team interacts with the project management team at the initial stage of the project and plays a role in the process of project requirement change and final acceptance.
• Human Resources Team: The Human Resources Team will participate in team formation and training.

Iv. Summary

The goal of process improvement is to improve the overall performance of the R & D team. process improvement is an important and long-term task. It must be based on the actual situation of the organization (such as development strategy and R & D strength) to sort out process domains and improvement schemes, and fully consider the cost and benefits of process improvement. The purpose of lightweight process improvement is to effectively improve the process capability through low cost for Small and Medium-sized R & D teams without dedicated process improvement departments. The goal is to achieve the Process Capability suitable for the team's development. The process improvement streamer should have certain software engineering and project management knowledge, and then read the mainstream software development and management models and process improvement models, and then crop and expand them. This series of subsequent articles will discuss the specific improvement domains one by one. Many content will be relevant, and you are welcome to discuss the improper content together.

Summary of Lightweight Process Improvement