SPICE for small organisations

Abstract

There is a perception in small to medium software developers that international standards and process improvement models such as ISO/IEC 15504 are developed and are relevant only for large organisations. This paper discusses the results of a case study focusing on the conduct of a process improvement project in a small organisation, Mirrabooka Systems Pty Ltd. The project involved providing financial assistance, assessment services and process improvement mentoring to improve the capability of the organisation's software development processes. The activities centred around the provision of ISO/IEC 15504 conformant assessments, or more commonly known as SPICE Assessments, the results of which provided a basis for developing and implementing a process improvement programme for the organisation, which was implemented over a period of 18 months, and finally determining the improvements realised over that time frame. It discusses both the benefits and concerns Mirrabooka Systems Pty Ltd experienced by participating in the project and also demonstrates that ISO/IEC 15504 is not just suitable for large organisations but is also relevant and beneficial for small organisations. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Applying the Action-Research Method to Develop a Methodology to Reduce the Installation and Maintenance Times of Information Security Management Systems

“…Numerous bibliographical sources detect and highlight how difficult it is for SMEs to use traditional security management maturity methodologies and models, since they have been conceived for large businesses [40][41][42][43]. It has repeatedly been justified that the application of this type of maturity models and methodologies is difficult and costly for SMEs.…”

“…The aforementioned security management methodologies and models have not proved to be valid in SMEs for three reasons [40][41][42][43][44]:…”

Between control and drift: negotiating improvement in a small software firm

“…Most of these studies report from one or a few cases of successful application and, on that basis, recommend the presented approach to other small software firms. Examples are DSDM and people process (Coleman and Verbruggen, 1998), AMETIST (Thowart, 1999), TAPESTRY (Kuvaja et al, 1999), 3P approach (Brouse and Buys, 1999), IMPACT (Scott et al, 2001), Software Process Matrix (Richardson, 2001(Richardson, , 2002, MESOPYME (Villalon et al, 2002), COSMEA (Grechenig and Zuser, 2004;Steel, 2004), and SPICE (Truffley et al, 2004). While these studies vary considerably in focus, they all advocate a need for adopting SPI-technology and they propose ways to downsize the effort to better match the resources and culture of small software firms.…”