Project Suite Operations
The Project Suite operations provide the SEPG view of software process change management. The SEPG is initiated, a chair person is appointed, process area specialists are assigned, a charter is drafted and approved, and process assets are inventoried. Project Process Area Assessments (Rounds 1-3) are conducted for the Project Management, Engineering, and Support process areas. Value Statements are prepared to establish and improve the infrastructure. Those that impact the organization or require funding approval are presented to the Software Steering Committee for action. Improvements are stimulated through Value Statements and refinements to the Organization Standard Process initiated by the Process Management process areas and its engine for software process improvement.

At the conclusion of each Project Process Area Assessment, the process area specialist identifies the fine grained actions and changes needed to achieve full compliance. The Value Statements identified are included in the Project Process Area Assessment Report. Each Value Statement is then developed into a proposal describing the need for the change, its benefits to the customer and organization, any impacts anticipated, and specific implementation actions.

Value Statements are entered in a Value Statement database. Here they are tracked to closure through several activities in the process flow including not started, started, completed, rejected, in rework, accepted, and forwarded. In an organization with five projects, there may be hundreds of Value Statements in the database. Value Statement origination and completion information provide useful metrics of software process improvement progress.

A database is maintained for the Inventory of process assets. These include, for example, policies, procedures, methods, tool documentation, training materials, Project Process Area Assessment Results for each process area for each Round (1-3), SEPG charter, templates, forms, reports, and much more. There may be several dozen items in the Inventory. The rate of arrival of artifacts and their access for use once entered provide useful information on software process activities.