Software process improvement programs: What are the pitfalls that lead to abandonment?

While many organizations successfully embrace and experience software process improvement (SPI) benefits, others abandon the effort before realizing the total potential result of an SPI initiative. Therefore, researchers' interest in understanding the reasons why software organizations that have a successful start in adopting SPI abandon improvement initiatives after evaluation has increased. Thus, this work aims to investigate how the abandonment of SPI programs based on maturity models occurs after the evaluation. The multiple case study method was used with eight organizations. Data were analyzed using Grounded Theory open and axial coding procedures. The results show that SPI initiatives failed because of internal factors (people, SPI project management, organizational aspects, and processes) and external factors to the organizational context (country economic crisis, outsourcing, governmental political influence, and external pressure from the client). As a contribution, we highlight the identification of these factors that organizations can use to learn about their initiatives and avoid pitfalls that can lead to the abandonment of SPI.