Assessment of factors affecting the software process improvement in small organizations

Software process improvement implies a set of complex and systematic activities of software engineering. It requires theory and models established in management, technical and social sciences. The improvement is based on the assumption that the organization if it owns mature and capable processes, would be able to deliver quality software on time and in line with predicted costs. The maturity models are initially aimed for implementation in enterprise software organizations, government organizations and within the military industry. Their complexity and the size make them difficult to use in small software organizations and companies. In such organizations the interest for use and the efforts to make an efficient and effective organization is always presented, though. In this paper, the basic and derived capability maturity models are described and cases from their implementation are analyzed, along with assessment of results of such projects in business practices. The problem of the software process improvement in small organizations is described, extracting the risks and recommendations for its enhancement. These recommendations are provided in order to set up a foundation for implementation of these models in a specific managerial and organizational environment characterized by small organizations.