Abstract. Software processes play important role in overall business performances of software organizations. However, in many cases processes are not well established, leading to poor performances of software products and services. Since majority of software organizations are small, suffering from the lack of resources, there is a permanent need for developing lightweight inductive approaches for assessing and improving their processes. These approaches should start from the actual state of the practice in software organizations, and result with the most suitable improvement proposals. This paper presents a short introduction into software processes, process assessment and improvement, and motivation for investigating the field of inductive software process assessment. The paper also outlines basic principles of inductive assessment approaches and future challenges.