With work now progressing on the revision of ISO/IEC 15504 as a family of related Standards (the ISO/IEC 33001-99 series on the common theme of Process Assessment), the Conference this year will focus on some of the implications of the new, more open architecture. In particular, we are seeking contributions relating to the development and industry application of process models for assessment.

Papers and presentations related to the topics of process assessment, improvement and capability determination are invited for the conference. Topics include but are not limited to:

• Adaptive process improvement;
• Integrated models for enterprise-wide assessment and improvement;
• Progressive process improvement model;
• Fusion of process and functional safety assessments;
• Knowledge and skills for process assessment and improvement;
• Relating business goals and/or risks to process improvements;
• Measurement frameworks and ratings;
• Safety and dependability process model extensions;
• Relationships between process capability and organizational maturity;
• Assessment of organizations at higher Maturity Levels;
• Empirical studies on characteristics of high maturity organizations;
• Factors influencing the conduct and reliability of assessments;
• Methods, models and tools to support process assessment;
• Emerging Process Reference Models and Process Assessment Models;
• Innovation, Knowledge and Technology Transfer Models;
• Case study and experience reports on process improvement and/or capability determination;
• Case study and experience reports in performing remote assessments;
• Benchmarking as a foundation for process improvement;
• Relationships and comparisons between different models and approaches to process assessment;
• Theoretical considerations on the basis of the technique of process assessment;
• Use of process assessment in domains outside software, systems engineering and service management;
• Issues in assessing virtual enterprises and teams;
• Assessment approaches applied to agile development;
• Conformity assessment approaches and schemes for process capability and organizational maturity.

The breadth of application of the standardised approach to process assessment remains a topic of considerable interest, from both a practical and theoretical perspective; accordingly, the SPICE 2012 Conference seeks contributions specifically relating to the following areas of application:

• Financial institutions and banks;
• Automotive systems and software;
• Aerospace systems and software;
• Medical device systems and software;
• IT service management;
• Enterprise systems;
• Test process improvement;
• Outsourcing organisations;
• Safety-related systems and software;
• Small and very small enterprises.

A special focus will also be given to the application and improvement of key development processes, such as Testing, Requirements Engineering and Project Management.