Product Focused Software Process Improvement

On behalf of the PROFES Organizing Committee we are proud to present to you the proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Product Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2005), held in Oulu, Finland. Since 1999, PROFES has established itself as one of the recognized inter- tional software process improvement conferences. Thepurposeoftheconferenceistobringtolightthemostrecent?ndingsand results in the area and to stimulate discussion between researchers, experienced professionals,andtechnologyproviders.Thelargenumberofparticipantscoming from industry con?rms that the conference provides a variety of up-to-date t- ics and tackles industry problems. The main theme of PROFES is professional software process improvement (SPI) motivated by product and service quality needs. SPI is facilitated by software process assessment, software measurement, process modeling, and technology transfer. It has become a practical tool for quality software engineering and management. The conference addresses both the solutions found in practice and the relevant research results from academia. This is re?ected in the 42 full papers, which are – as in the years before – a well-balanced mix of academic papers as well as industrial experience reports. The business of developing new applications like mobile and Internet services orenhancingthefunctionalityofavarietyofproductsusingembeddedsoftwareis rapidlygrowing,maturingandmeetingtheharshbusinessrealities.Theaccepted papers focusing on wireless and the Internet are grouped into a special “mobile and wireless” session. WewishtothankVTTElectronics,theUniversityofOuluincludingInfotech, and Fraunhofer IESE for supporting the conference. We are also grateful to the authors for high-quality papers, the Program Committee fortheir hard work in reviewing the papers, the Organizing Committee for making the event possible, and all the numerous supporters who helped in organizing this conference.