Abstract
Leadership is a relevant aspect for the success of Software Process Improvement (SPI) initiatives. Leadership as Practice is an approach characterized by perspectives of practices and understands leadership as a social process contextually situated. A multi-case qualitative research was conducted, with three initiatives of SPI. Data was collected by means of fifteen semi-structured interviews, in depth, with involved subjects in the studied cases, besides the documentation available by companies that participated in the study. The analyses technique employed for the investigation of leadership practices was the thematic analyses. In each of the SPI initiatives researched, the same five distinct practices were found: Responsiveness, Empowering, Facilitation, Engagement and Structuring. These five practices are defined as the REFES Model. The present investigation demonstrated that the context of practices is not limited to their social context, but instead is increased for the own practice, by participating at the context of other practices. Therefore, it was concluded that leadership in SPI initiatives usually involve complex network of relationships, practices and structures and that it mostly occurs vertically, formally and collaboratively.
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Zoucas, A.C., Cunha, C.J.d.A., Salviano, C.F. (2018). REFES Model for Leadership as Practice in Software Process Improvement Initiatives. In: Stamelos, I., O'Connor, R., Rout, T., Dorling, A. (eds) Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination. SPICE 2018. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 918. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00623-5_10
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