Many organizations have adopted methods, models, and standards to improve their software processes. However, despite these efforts, they can still find it difficult to deploy processes throughout the organization because most of them focus more on the technical rather than human aspects. This paper proposes a taxonomy of critical success factors for software process deployment. A method to create this taxonomy was developed and applied based on a systematic review of existing literature and is complemented with industry experiences where software processes have been deployed or implemented. Finally, the categories, subcategories, and items of this taxonomy are presented. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media New York.