Initiating software process improvement in very small enterprises: Experience with a light assessment tool

The paper concerns software process improvement in Very Small Enterprises (VSEs). It presents briefly a gradual methodology to initiate software process improvement in VSE through three steps approach and develops the first and most original step. This first step is based on a light evaluation achieved by means of a dedicated Micro-Evaluation approach. It has been experimented during 7 years in 86 organizations from three countries. The experience with that utilization tends to show that such a light approach is practicable and promising, at least for the targeted enterprises.