Software development maturity evaluation: six cases from Estonian SMEs

Abstract

Purpose -The software industry, especially software development (SD), in Estonia is at the present moment in the phase of expansion: first level of life cycle of the industry. Initial maturity level of the industry is among other factors characterized by lower maturity level of development process in companies/development teams. The goal of this paper is to analyze the maturity level of SD process in Estonian companies. Usually, poorly managed processes and low-development performance are the major reasons for overrun deadlines and insufficient competitive advantages. Therefore, improved performance is the key factor of SD industry competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach -The methodology used in the paper is semi-structured interviews with experienced software developers/project managers in Estonian SD enterprises. On the basis of the interviews, authors were analyzing the usability of capability maturity model integration (CMMI) in Estonian SD companies to perform/apply the software process improvement (SPI). Findings -Results based on self-evaluation are describing the current level of SD process maturity in sense of CMMI in Estonian SD enterprises. Also, the difficulties of collecting process performance data were discovered. SD companies did not find it necessary to collect and save development process performance data, such as number of (corrected) errors, number of lines of code, etc. Originality/value -The paper describes structured performance as SD process maturity in sense of CMMI together with development process performance as project characteristics: product quality, cycle-time, development effort, product maintainability, etc.

National Project Management Maturity: A Conceptual Framework

“…Other examples where such models were used to analyze industry-wide project management maturity include: the software industry in Estland (Puus and Mets, 2010), the engineering and construction industry in South Africa (Pretorius et al, 2012) and Morocco (Alami et al, 2015), and the Serbian energy sector (Mihic et al, 2015). All these studies found generally low levels of project management maturity.…”

Analysis of Enterprise Accounting Data Management Evaluation Model Based on Maturity Modeling

“…The DCMM, also known as the Data Management Capability Maturity Assessment Model (DCMM), provides an accurate assessment of the current data management situation in relevant organizations and institutions [13]. By analyzing the maturity level of SD processes in Estonian companies, literature [14] found that poor data management processes and low development performance are the main reasons for the lack of competitive advantage. Performance improvement is a key factor for competitiveness in the SD industry.…”

Online ethnography: a study of software developers and software development

“…One of these groups is software developers. By the nature of their activity, this group has to deal with multiple organisational contexts and projects in which there are often poorly managed processes with very low managerial performance (Puus and Mets, 2010). Through online media like blogs, electronic forums or social networking sites researchers can get to know what developers do, or how they think about their work and life in general.…”