Conception et experimentation d'un modele de mesures supportant l'amelioration continue de la productivite des organisations qui developpent, maintiennent et utilisent intensivement du logiciel

Organizations intensively using and developing software ("Software Intensive Organizations", or SIOs) experience production problems and difficulty in satisfying customer needs, which have an impact on their competitiveness and viability. The general goal of our research work is to address such problematics by the design and experimentation of a measurement program in support of the permanent, measurable and overall continuous improvement (CI) of the productivity and continuity of SIOs that are small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The three specific objectives of this research are to: 1. Define a way to effectively, dynamically and continuously measure the various parameters of the SIO in order to determine the impact and maintenance of the changes introduced by a continuous improvement program (CIP). 2. Develop a strategy management model allowing to focus the CIP toward an overall optimization in order to ensure continuity and increases in value, considering all assets and without limiting the innovative capacity. 3. Define an approach to know the state of the organizational situation in order to support the managers in their control and steering at all decision levels of the SIO with relation to its various structures.;Our experiments were performed concurrently in two organizations with a one-month lag in order to directly integrate the project results in the second one. In chronological order and by group of achievement, our experiments consisted in: collecting data and making an analysis of situations in the SMEs; exploring the deployment of good practices (GPs) assessed by measures; developing an approach to determine the real improvement caused by the initiatives; exploring the use of scoreboards as a steering support, ensuring lighter management of indicators and more effective monitoring of the approaches to ensure the maintenance of the mechanisms established; exploring the impacts of CIPs in SME-type SIOs.;Our experiments demonstrated that, without coaching, the use of good practices disappears rapidly. So we selected and adapted the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) to gradually deploy, over a period of two years, a process infrastructure that defines the structure and scheduling of activities, thereby determining what is done or needs to be done. We also deployed the management processes essential to their operation.;A performance measurement system (PMS) must measure with values close to real time the parameters that assess the size and the overall state of the SIO with stringent measures offering a framework that organizes the indicators. We selected and modified the Balanced ScoreCard (BSC) as a basis for the PMS. We designed a mechanism breaking down the single value at all levels and for each resource in all administrative units, and also a model based on indicators generating a single value that represents the state of the SIO facing its vision to ensure its continuity. The establishment of a set of indicators supported by a scoreboard allowing faster data recovery should support, and make permanent, the use of good practices through an interactive monitoring of the situation. Therefore, mechanisms objectively and quantitatively demonstrating the real impacts of the measures must be deployed and integrated into the measurement program.;The strategic management system (SMS) is designed to ensure that the improvement will bring maximum benefits and to focus the CIP toward an overall optimization of the organization. Since the SMS does not provide for a two-way communication mechanism, a collaboration system on strategy can be added. The other contribution of our work is an approach and algorithms to consolidate the values of the SIO indicators allowing to assess the situation at a given point in the strategic management model. This work has enabled the development of a methodology for deployment and governance of a strategy based on an SMS covering the entire life cycle. We also developed a model based on "i *" to ensure a structured definition of the vision and of its transformation toward the goals in addition to providing a better balance between the perspectives of an SMS. Furthermore, we developed a structured model that ensures the definition of the goals based on the vision and mission by providing a balance between the various perspectives of the SMS. In addition, the establishment of the elements of the intelligent business (IB) can reduce some of the rigidity problems imposed by the process infrastructure and the SMS.;Finally, we defined a solution architecture allowing continuous improvement by assessing the overall value of the SIOs that aim at becoming intelligent, providing continuity monitoring and responding to the gaps related to the SMS, the PMS and the CIP. Experiments were then used to conceptualize a collaborative and integrated software environment meeting those needs.;The first software product derived from our work on the management of CIP-related initiatives, especially the Six Sigma, was sold as a management tool for websites and intranet in about 40 organizations. This software has been intensively marketed by a partner, and a licence to sell was established with one of the largest players of the North-American industry. Other research deliverables are a set of indicators with documented characteristics and models that structure the knowledge of the state of the art.