IT has become an integral part of almost every European organization today and provides the basis for operational efficiency, improved customer services, and coordination of the functional units that make up an enterprise. Since an ever-increasing portion of budget is spent on IT every year, and as many organizations re-engineer their business processes, IT procurement is becoming a focus area where even modest improvements can result in significant economic and operational benefits.

Business Process Re-engineering and Software Process Assessment are used by many organizations for IT process assessment. Documentation is available which substantiates the benefits gained when implementing process improvement actions.

The PULSE project leverages this experience and extends process assessment to encompass IT procurement, by using existing tools and material from the following areas:

• Proprietary software process assessment methodologies (for example, CMM, Bootstrap)
• Procurement methods and best practice guidebooks (for example, EuroMethod, SOTIP, BPG’s Best Practices for Procurement Guidebook)
• Assessment support tools (for example, SynQuest)
• ISO standards for assessment and process models