Objetivo The objective of the PIE is the improvement of SW capabilities in order to improve the business goals of ONION, an Italian SME offering services in the fields of IT communications, technologies and consulting. The largest pay-off is foreseen in the introduction of mature methods and tools in the key process areas of testing and configuration management.Higher capabilities in such topics are expected to directly impact competitiveness, achieving higher quality (mainly by more structured and automated testing) and greater economy (thanks to an higher re-use guaranteed by an effective configuration management).THE EXPERIMENT The PIE is structured in the following main phases: - procurement of selected methods and tools;- training on technology and underpinning methods;- definition of rules on how to apply the selected methods and tools onto the baseline projects;- application of selected methodologies and tools within the pilot baseline projects;- collection of quantitative indicators;- analysis of Return On Investment;- packaging of positive experiences by means of standard operating procedures;- internal dissemination;- external dissemination.The PIE is based on two baselines projects, one dedicated to WWW information publishing, the other to a new release of a telematics application dedicated to multi-cast, pseudo real-time, multimedia, private communication on the Internet. ONION employs 15 people; 6 of them are impacted by the PIE. EXPECTED IMPACT AND EXPERIENCE As an accompanying action, a simple measurement system is used to track the effectiveness of experienced practices and tools. In the following is provided a list of the quantitative indicators expected to be positively impacted by the improvement actions: - Timeliness (Planned service development time / actual time)- Re-use (% of common SW modules re-used)- Fault density (Faults / KLOC)- Testing effectiveness (Faults in testing / Total faults)- SW Productivity (KLOC / person-month) The PIE is seen as an important step towards ISO 9000 registration for the company. Ámbito científico natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesinternetsocial scienceseconomics and businesseconomicsproduction economicsproductivity Programa(s) FP4-ESSI 2 - Software Best Practice initiative within the framework of the specific research and technological development programme in the field of Information Technologies, 1994-1998 Tema(s) 1.28 - Process Improvement Experiments Convocatoria de propuestas Data not available Régimen de financiación ACM - Preparatory, accompanying and support measures Coordinador Onion Aportación de la UE Sin datos Dirección Via L. Gussalli 11 25131 Brescia Italia Ver en el mapa Coste total Sin datos