On behalf of the PROFES organizing committee we would like to welcome you to the 4th International Conference on Product Focused Software Process Impro- ment (PROFES 2002) in Rovaniemi, Finland. The conference was held on the Arctic Circle in exotic Lapland under the Northern Lights just before Christmas time, when Kaamos (the polar night is known in Finnish as "Kaamos") shows its best characteristics. PROFES has established itself as one of the recognized international process improvement conferences. Despite the current economic downturn, PROFES has attracted a record number of submissions. A total of 70 full papers were subm- ted and the program committee had a di?cult task in selecting the best papers to be presented at the conference. The main theme of PROFES is professional software process improvement (SPI) motivated by product and service quality needs. SPI is facilitated by so- ware process assessment, software measurement, process modeling, and techn- ogy transfer. It has become a practical tool for quality software engineering and management. The conference addresses both the solutions found in practice and the relevant research results from academia.