Various methods, models and standards for software process improvement have been adopted by organizations to improve their software processes. However, despite these efforts they still encounter difficulties in their process deployment throughout the organization. This is because the vast majority of these efforts focus more on the technical aspects, bypassing the human aspects. There is a set of factors that influence the successful deployment of new or modified processes. This paper presents taxonomy of critical success factors in software process deployment to achieve the processes institutionalization. The development of a taxonomy related to these critical success factors is based on a systematic review of existing literature on specialized databases and industrial experiences that have deployed or implemented processes. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media.