Under the 4"' Framework of European Research, the European Systems and Software Initiative (ESSI) was part of the ESPRIT Programme. This initiative funded more than 470 projects in the area of software and system process improvements. The majority of these projects were process improvement experiments carrying out and taking up new development processes, methods and technology within the software development process of a company. In addition, nodes (centres of expertise), European networks (organisations managing local activities), training and dissemination actions complemented the process improvement experiments.
ESSI aimed at improving the software development capabilities of European enterprises. It focused on best practice and helped European companies to develop world class skills and associated technologies to build the increasingly complex and varied systems needed to compete in the marketplace.
The dissemination activities were designed to build a forum, at European level, to exchange information and knowledge gained within process improvement experiments. Their major objective was to spread the message and the results of experiments to a wider audience, through a variety of different channels.
The European Experience Exchange (EUREX) project has been one of these dissemination activities within the European Systems and Software 1nitiative.EUREX has collected the results of practitioner reports from numerous workshops in Europe and presents, in this series of books, the results of Best Practice achievements in European Companies over the last few years.
EUREX assessed, classified and categorised the outcome of process improvement experiments. The theme based books will present the results of the particular problem areas. These reports are designed to help other companies facing software process improvement problems.
The results of the various projects collected in these books should encourage many companies facing similar problems to start some improvements on their own. Within the Information Society Technology (IST) programme unde r' t5he Framework of European Research, new take up and best practices activities will be launched in various Key Actions to encourage the companies in improving their business areas.