Software engineering is of major importance to all enterprises; however, the key areas of software quality and software process improvement standards and models are currently geared toward large organizations, where most software organizations are small and medium enterprises. Software Process Improvement for Small and Medium Enterprises: Techniques and Case Studies offers practical and useful guidelines, models, and techniques for improving software processes and products for small and medium enterprises, utilizing the authoritative, demonstrative tools of case studies and lessons learned to provide academics, scholars, and practitioners with an invaluable research source.

Software Process Improvement for Small and Medium Enterprises: Techniques and Case Studies

In today's world, the users of software-based products demand a lot. They want the systems to offer the needed functionality, show high performance and, at the same time, be usable and trustworthy. Especially consumer products should also offer joy to the user. The success of a software-based product strongly depends on how well the product fulfills these user expectations. Therefore, considering the users' expectations should be an integral part of modern system engineering activities. This paper shows an approach that was designed to appraise and measure the users' (future) satisfaction in an early phase of system development: the requirements engineering phase. In this phase little systematic guidance exists on how to evaluate the effects of features on user satisfaction early on, and on how to contribute the results to the development process. AMUSE (appraisal and measurement of user satisfaction), the approach presented in this paper, closes this gap. It helps requirements engineers and product managers to select the most promising features, i.e., the ones that will satisfy the user the most, already in the requirements phase. The approach uses a standardized user satisfaction measurement device (questionnaire), a feature appraisal and prioritization methodology, and tool support. This approach was developed and piloted in cooperation with Siemens AG, Germany.

Built-in User Satisfaction - Feature Appraisal and Prioritization with AMUSE

Presently, the majority of software development including outsourcing is carried out by small- and medium-sized software development organisations all over the world. These organisations are not capable of bearing the cost of implementing available software quality models like CMM, SPICE, ISO, etc. Therefore, there is a need to address this problem. In this paper, we have tried to compare the main characteristics, benefits, and limitations of the models for small and medium software development organisations. We believe that this effort will contribute towards the development of a standardised quality improvement model for small- and medium-sized software development organisations.

Software quality assurance models in small and medium organisations: a comparison

Undoubtedly, measuring artifacts such as development processes, employed resources, intermediate deliverables, and the completed software product itself turns out to be a root discipline for the field of software engineering. Due to its importance, there are supportive documents, guidelines, and experiences with software measurement in industrial software engineering settings that can be a significant aid for organizations willing to shoulder its implementation. But establishing and sustaining a software measurement process in a particular industrial environment is often regarded as a difficult venture; these ventures are not infrequently reported to fail in practice. It is the dedicated task of this research project to address the lack of maturity in implementing and sustaining software measurement processes in software engineering industry through a stepwise process improvement model along the measurement paradigms. In order to tackle that issue, the engineering research path is taken to be able to adopt advantageous features of prior, incomplete attempts to the problem. Part I of the thesis deals with the observation and evaluation of those existing solutions using previously elicited criteria in terms of required contentand model-related properties of software measurement process improvement models. Starting from the evaluation’s results, the most promising of the prior solution attempts is adopted as basis model and its shortcoming is analyzed. Afterwards, in part II a development concept and a design rationale for a process model to overcome the shortcoming of the basis model are proposed, and the complemented SMPI (Software Process Improvement Model) is developed. The SMPI model is then presented graphically using diagrams according to the BPMN (Buisiness Process Modeling Notation) and textually using the EITVOX (Entry criteria Inputs Tasks Validation Outputs Exit criteria) process modeling methodology. Finally, in part III of the dissertation the external case-study validation of the developed SMPI is presented and interpreted by means of statistical test of hypotheses.

The SMPI model: a stepwise process model to facilitate software measurement process improvement along the measurement paradigms.

CMMI is an internationally-known standard, developed by the Software Engineering Institute, whose objective is to allow the maturity-level evaluation of organizations concerned to software development. The Eldorado Research Institute adopted and follows the staged representation approach of the CMMI model that focuses the process improvement in a systemic and structured way, aiming to reach a stage that allows the generation of a framework for the next stage. Being certified to the maturity Level 3 and looking for the Level 4 certification, this paper deals with some details of indicator definition for the Eldorado Research Institute, concerning the migration to the maturity Level 4 of the CMMI model, and also deals with identified problems and pitfalls during this migration effort.

Problems and Pitfalls in a CMMI level 3 to level 4 Migration Process

The Software Technology Transfer Initiative Kaiserslautern (STTI-KL) is an organization for transferring software technology, and is sponsored by the Ministry for Commerce and Transport of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The STTI-KL is a partner especially for small and medium size companies to increase the quality and productivity of their software developments. Acknowledgements The authors want to thank all who contributed this document. The described process model is based on the experiences of the partners gained in the ESSI-project CEMP to a great extent. For the exchange of experiences we would like to thank Helmut Woda from

Erik Roden

Papers

A Process Model for GQM-Based Measurement