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This paper presents results of two surveys among European software houses. One of the targets of the studies was to identify software process improvements that companies have achieved while implementing ISO 9000-based quality systems. The first survey was conducted among 20 German software suppliers that have received an ISO 9001 certificate. The study focuses on five elements of an ISO 9000 quality system; code reviews and inspections; software testing; product and process measurements; measurement of quality costs; and demonstration of quality improvements. Many software houses included in our first survey have not carried out any modifications of the five elements. Thus, it seemed that ISO 9000 had not led to significant improvements. Nevertheless, the majority of the companies would decide in favor of implementing an ISO 9000 quality system once again. We conducted a second study to gain a better understanding of the improvements achieved with the help of ISO 9000. We analyzed experience reports and conducted interviews with quality managers from a total of 36 European software houses. The paper presents ten key success factors that the respondents of our studies considered to be the most helpful when implementing an ISO 9000 quality system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]