There has been much focus on the development process in the Software Process Improvement community. This paper describes software
process improvement work done within a product division in a medium-sized Norwegian software company. The division has the
main responsibility for the market activities, development, implementation, maintenance and support of their software products.
We identified three main problem areas related to the overall process for management of the software product. None of the
problem areas were directly concerned with the development process itself. The problem areas were addressed by the division’s
management. Despite the lack of focus on the programmers and the development process, the programmers’ attitude changed into
a more positive one. One reason might be that the new overall product handling process “protected” the programmers from the
market activities, and also clarified responsibility for the core development and the maintenance development. This paper
discusses the findings in the case-study, and concludes that maybe the best software process improvement initiative would
be to simply leave the programmers alone.