The software development culture of Northern Ireland

The Northern Ireland (NI) software development survey was developed by the Centre for Software Process Technologies (CSPT). CSPT was established in September 2002 and is jointly funded by Invest Northern Ireland (an economic development agency) and the University of Ulster. One of the centre’s early priorities was to obtain an understanding of current local software engineering practice. The vehicle chosen to obtain this information was a questionnaire, administered through face-to-face interviews. Key personnel in fifty-six software development organizations were surveyed in this way. This paper presents a subset of our findings with a focus on quality and software process improvement issues in NI software development organizations.