Process improvement priorities in small software companies

Summary form only given. Software process improvement (SPI) in small enterprises or business units requires special attention when applying models and standards which usually have been designed from the viewpoint of large organizations. Both the Capability Maturity Model for Software (SW-CMM) and the ISO/IEC 15504 TR-Software Process Assessment (SPICE) can be applied to small organizations. The key issue is what kind of priorities and preferences smaller organizations set for their SPI. The background of this work is a project, which supports small and medium sized software enterprises in software process improvement (SPI). Business needs are examined using SPICE as the framework for software processes and continuous process improvement. “A small company” means any software-producing organization with less than 100 employees. The most common starting point for SPI in a small company is that they have realized the need for process improvement, and have understanding and experience of good practices. On the other hand they do not have an overall view of the company situation and do not know any process models