4.4. Environmental Factors
Analysis of both the case study reports and interviews, suggests that a number of environmental factors influence practitioner judgments of software
engineering processes, with respect to certain quality attributes. In addition, it seems likely that certain environmental factors may also influence the priority given by practitioners to particular quality attributes when judging the overall quality of a software engineering process. For example, in a situation where a project is running with a tight schedule and a small
budget, the process quality attribute of efficiency may be considered more important than would be the case for a project with a relatively long cycle-time and large budget. Although it is premature at this point to present a comprehensive list of environmental factors and the
nature of their relationships with process quality attributes, preliminary evidence indicates that these factors may be grouped into the following four categories:
• Business Factors
• Cultural Factors
• Organisational Factors
• Product Factors
Business factors include, for example, the maturity of the company, the strategic direction, the business model employed, the nature of customers and suppliers, the regulatory environment or the local economy. Cultural factors include the level of trust between people working within the organisation, specific national or regional characteristics or whether there is a reflective and participative approach to improvement. Organisational factors encompass topics such as the current level of expertise, the resources available, the size of the organisation or the way in
which the organisation is structured. Product factors may include the criticality of software produced, the urgency with which software needs to be delivered, the technology being applied or the software life-cycle adopted.