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Characterizing the state of software engineering practice within an organization is a necessary prerequisite to orderly, meaningful, and sustainable improvement of the organizations ability to produce or support cost-effective, high quality software products. The Software Engineering Institute is developing a methodology for conducting SEI-assisted assessments of software engineering capability. The assessment methodology has five phases: 1. selecting the candidate organization, 2. preparing for the assessment, 3. conducting the assessment, 4. communicating final assessment findings and action recommendations, and 5. post-assessment follow-up activities. This report describes the methodology in detail.

The Team Software Process Body of Knowledge (TSP BOK) was drafted to define the fundamental knowledge and skills that set TSP-trained individuals apart from other software professionals. It helps individual practitioners to assess and improve their own skills, provides employers with an objective baseline for assessing the process improvement skills and capabilities of their development team members, and guides academic institutions that want to incorporate TSP into their software and other engineering courses or curricula. The TSP BOK also facilitates the development of TSP certification programs that are based on a well-established standard set of knowledge and skills.

Since June 1998, Watts Humphrey took readers of news@sei and its predecessor SEI Interactive on a process-improvement journey, step by step, in his column Watts New. The column explored the problem of setting impossible dates for project completion, planning as a team using TSP, the importance of removing software defects, applying discipline to software development, approaching managers about a process improvement effort, and making a persuasive case for implementing it. After 10 years, Watts is taking a well-deserved retirement from writing the quarterly column. But you can still enjoy vintage Watts New columns, including all of the above topics, in the (news@sei archives) or in the Watts New Collection.

Summarizes work initiated at the National Cybersecurity Summit, held 2-3 December 2003 in Santa Clara, California. Attendees representing industry, academia, and the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) formed five task forces to focus on specific topic areas. This report describes, the key problems and recommendations identified by the Software Process subgroup of the "Security Across the Software Development Lifecycle" task force. Producing secure software is a multifaceted problem of software engineering, security engineering, and management. Thus, producing secure software starts with outstanding software engineering practices, augmented with sound technical practices, and supported by management practices that promote secure software development. We discuss these practices.