An empirical examination of the extent of software process improvement in software SMEs

Abstract

SUMMARYAlthough earlier studies revealed much about software process improvement (SPI) in Small-to Medium-sized Enterprises (software SMEs), no earlier research set out to determine the full extent of SPI being implemented in software SMEs. Therefore, this study was designed from the outset to elicit all instances of SPI, which we term SPI events -no matter how small or informal. We make the important new discovery that SMEs initiate a considerable amount of SPI, albeit in varying quantities in different organisations. No earlier study reported that the practice of SPI was so widespread in software SMEs, and this is perhaps related to the extensive scope of the enquiry adopted in this study. Our study also finds that the significant majority of SPI in software SMEs is minor or moderate in nature, sometimes leveraging the human capital via improvements in tacit knowledge. Software development is an intrinsically human intensive activity and it therefore follows that the maximisation of the human capital in an organisation is a source of competitive advantage. However, contemporary process maturity frameworks and quality management standards do not fully exploit the capacity of human capital and may therefore diminish rather than improve the competitive advantage of software SMEs.

An Investigation of Software Development Process Terminology

“…Through looking to some of the most impactful process models, we can also start to get some indication of the depth and nature of the diversity of language, and in this case, our finding is that a software professional familiar with Scrum may have difficulty relating some Scrum terminology to the Waterfall model (and vice versa). Indeed, when it is further considered that a wide variety of situational or environmental factors inform process selection [29], that processes may be tailored for individual project needs [30], and that the software process itself may be continually evolving [31], [32], the problem of term usage is perhaps amplified -since a hybrid software development process may further confuse language and terminology usage. Our general impression is that there is a wide variety of different terminology adopted to represent similar or overlapping concepts, and perhaps a lack of clarity with respect to the salient concepts of concern across different software development efforts.…”

The Route to Software Process Improvement in Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises

“…Although there are multiple approaches for organizing the software development process and multiple factors influencing the software development process [25], SMEs can have a low software development process priority [10], since they are focused on the product quality and delivery time rather than in the process quality [12]. Software SMEs report that they adopt a mix-and-match philosophy to their software development process, mixing aspects of different prescribed software development approaches in order to fulfill their needs within their constraints [26]. In other words, these companies do not use a software process model in a "text-book" fashion [27,140,138], preferring instead either to drop elements of their chosen model or, develop something proprietary best suited to their specific needs.…”

“…In summary, taking into account studies and efforts in the area of SPI for small organizations [49,26,126,55,12,120], it is evident that there is a need to find mechanisms that allow them to incorporate process improvement into their daily work, taking into account their business model, situational factors, limited resources, and cost and time constraints which are specific to their environment.…”

Proceso de pruebas para pequeñas organizaciones desarrolladoras de software

“…Las pequeñas organizaciones del software necesitan llevar a cabo sus pruebas de manera planeada y sistemática, con el fin de promover el desarrollo de software de calidad y, así, obtener ventajas competitivas [7,8]. El mercado valora, cada día más, la calidad, por lo tanto, las compañías exigen la disminución de errores, y penalizan los retrasos en entregas y las cancelaciones de proyectos [9].…”