Why don't companies use processes they already paid to define?
Nathalia Lorena Cardoso Dias defended at FCTE/UnB an undergraduate thesis using a systematic literature review to investigate why formally defined software improvement processes are frequently unused in practice.
Brasília, March 4, 2023
There is a question that runs through consulting engagements and retrospective meetings: if the process was carefully written, approved and rolled out, why does it stay unused? This silent paradox is the object of the undergraduate thesis defended in March 2023 by Nathalia Lorena Cardoso Dias, advised by Prof. Fabiana Freitas Mendes .
The work is a systematic literature review — a format that lets one enter the question without becoming a hostage to anecdotes from a single case. The author consolidates scattered evidence about factors that explain the underuse of formal software improvement processes: distance between norm and daily practice, lack of effective sponsorship, veiled resistance, cognitive cost of adoption, among others. The result is a panorama that helps anyone about to launch yet another process to first look at what has already been launched — and did not stick.
By tying software quality to an organizational lens, the thesis gives visibility to a theme almost always reduced to training. It shows that the distance between defined process and practiced process is built from small cumulative decisions — and that facing it requires more than paperwork.
The full text — written in Portuguese — is available at the UnB Undergraduate Theses Digital Library.
About CEDIS: The Center for Studies, Development, and Innovation in Software (CEDIS), linked to the University of Brasília, researches and develops innovative software solutions.