Why so many process improvement efforts have failed after a very promising start? All those great ideas and the initial hype are gone after the first few difficulties, and in some cases, the blaming game begins.

The human side of process improvement is quite an important factor of success for the process improvement projects. It is mainly represented by the company culture, the management style, the team and the personal performance.

I present several scenarios, pinpointing the opportunities for success or failure: companies with no control of processes, companies with a tight control, companies were personal processes are stronger than the organizational ones.

No silver bullets are proposed, but few practical proven ideas on how to act to raise the levels of drive and motivation for the persons involved in process improvement are given.

And last but not the least, how process improvement efforts are best served by adopting the  practices documented in methodologies (Agile, RUP, EUP, …), bodies of knowledge (PMBOK, SWEBOK, …) and process models (CMMI constellations, …).