Abstract: The Software Process Improvement and Capability dEtermination (SPICE) Project (Dorling 1993) was formed in 1993 to support the development of an international standard for software process assessment.The project led to the publication of ISO/IEC 15 504 (ISO/IEC 15 504 2003-2006), the International Standard for Process Assessment, and to the conduct of the SPICE Trials (Maclennan et al. 1998), resulting in significant empirical research into the application of process assessment in modelbased improvement initiatives.As part of its charter to provide ongoing publicity and transition support for the emerging standard, the Project organised a number of SPICE Workshops and Seminars, with invited speakers drawn from project participants; this tradition was continued by the SPICE Users Group through the annual SPICE Conferences, aimed at increasing knowledge and understanding of the International Standard, and of the technique of process assessment.The six articles presented in this special issue are drawn from the 2005 SPICE Conference, held in Klagenfurt, Austria.They embrace a range of topics; two relate to the assessment process itself, two to the expansion in the range of domains to which assessment has been applied, while there is one report on a long-term improvement impact