SOFTWARE PROCESS IMPROVEMENT AND PRACTICE Softw. Process Improve. Pract. 2006; 11: 193–211 Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/spip.261 Critical Success Factors for Software Process Improvement Implementation: An Empirical Study Research Section Mahmood Niazi 1,2 * ,† , David Wilson 3 and Didar Zowghi 3 1 School of Computing and Mathematics, Keele University, Staffs ST5 5BG, UK 2 National ICT Australia, Locked Bag 9013, NSW 1435, Australia 3 Faculty of Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia In this article, we present findings from our recent empirical study of the critical success factors (CSFs) for software process improvement (SPI) implementation with 34 SPI practitioners. The objective of this study is to provide SPI practitioners with sufficient knowledge about the nature of issues that play a positive role in the implementation of SPI programmes in order to assist them in effectively planning SPI implementation strategies. Through our empirical study we identified seven factors (higher management support, training, awareness, allocation of resources, staff involvement, experienced staff and defined SPI implementation methodology) that are generally considered critical for successfully implementing SPI. We also report on a literature survey of CSFs that impact SPI and identify six factors (senior management commitment, staff involvement, staff time and resources, training and mentoring, creating process action teams and reviews). We compared our empirical study results with the literature and confirmed the factors identified in the literature, and also identified two new CSFs (SPI awareness and defined SPI implementation methodology) that were not identified in the literature. Finally, we analyzed the CSFs identified by different groups of practitioners and found that they are aware of what is imperative for the successful implementation of SPI programmes. Copyright  2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. KEY WORDS: software process improvement; critical success factors; empirical study 1. INTRODUCTION Problems associated with software quality are widely acknowledged to affect the development * Correspondence to: Mahmood Niazi, School of Computing and Mathematics, Keele University, Staffs ST5 5BG, UK † E-mail: mahmood.niazi@nicta.com.au Copyright  2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. cost and time (Sommerville 1996). A recent study, conducted by a group of Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering and British Computer Society, shows that despite spending 22.6 billion pounds on IT projects in the UK during 2003/2004, a significant number of projects still fail to deliver key benefits on time and as per targeted cost and specifi- cation (The Royal Academy of Engineering 2004). In addition to such disappointing performance, some