Adaptation of the standards ISO/IEC 12207:2002 and ISO/IEC 15504:2003 for the assessment of the software processes in developing countries

Improvement in software development processes gives companies guaranteed high levels of maturity in their processes and increases their competitiveness in international terms. There are improvement, assessment and quality models which enjoy world-wide recognition but which must be adapted to the particular characteristics of the specific countries where those models are applied. These models can not easily be applied in the majority of organizations in many Latin American countries due to the large investment in money, time and resources that the models require. There is also the factor of the complexity of the recommendations they give, and the fact that the return on the investment is a long term prospect. This paper’s main goal is to present MECPDS, a light-weight model for the assessment of the quality of software development processes. This model is based on the ISO/IEC 12207 e ISO/IEC 15504 standards which are applicable to micro organizations, as well as small and medium ones. The model fulfils its function in a simple, economical way, using only a small amount of resources and in a short period of time.