Software process improvement methodologies for small and medium enterprises

Abstract

Today, the software industry is one of the most rapidly growing sectors and small software development companies play an important role in economy. Many such organizations have been interested in Software Process Improvement (SPI). It has been observed that the successful implementation of SPI methodologies is generally not possible within the context of small and medium-sized software enterprises (SMEs) because they are not capable of bearing the cost of implementing these software process improvement programs. Further the proper implementation of software engineering techniques is difficult task for SMEs as they often operate on limited resources and with strict time constraints. There are number of methodologies to address these issues. In this paper, various SPI methodologies for SMEs are discussed and compared. This will lead towards maturity of software process improvement in SMEs and also facilitates in development of automation tools for SPIs in future. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.