Process Improvement Issues in Small Software Industry

For the last one decade there is a multitude of literature being written on software process improvement (SPI) . SPI with conventional models like CMM/CMMI, ISO-15504 promises huge potential benefits for organizations. Some of the Process Improvement (PI) potential benefits are :

* Increased productivity
* Reduced cost
* Reduced defects
* Reduced rework
* Improved time to market with satisfied customers

However, most of the studies on SPI are centered on large organizations. Software process improvement (SPI) requires a considerable investment in terms of cost, time training, commitment from top management and good communication flow.

Traditional SPI approaches and assessment methods are costly for small organizations. The models underlying traditional SPI assessment and implementation programs such as CMM CMMI ISO90001 , SPICE and BOOTSTRAP were designed for large organizations. Process Improvement (PI) initiatives with such conventional models have difficulties and challenges when we implement them on small organizations. Hanna describes some major limitations of the existing SPI reference models. ISO/IEC 12207 and ISO/IEC15504 have undergone significant modifications during the last three years. So their adoption cost and suitability is not clear for small organizations. ISO 9001-2000 is not specific for software industry and it is not a set of processes as are CMM/CMMI. Another weakness of ISO 9001 is its generalizability. ISO-9001 is an abstract and sparse document that can be applied to any category of business. So it is very difficult to apply ISO-9001 standards to a software organization. Elif, Onur, Oguz and Billur also describe few limitations of ISO 9001 implementation in small organizations. Among major challenges of implementing ISO 9001, on small organizations are

* Lack of guidance of ISO 9001 standards on where to start and how to install quality system elements,
* Lack of action knowledge about process improvement principles

ISO9001 is lacking in maturity stages like CMM/CMMI. ISO-9001 organization choose to have only two statue, ‘satisfies’ or ‘not satisfied’ while CMM/CMMI have five distinct maturity stages for an organization to compare its process maturity with the levels below or above.

Although CMM/CMMI is a set of industry best practices but its implementation cost is a major drawback. For example, CMM based process assessment cost lies between +/- $25,000 and duration is +/- 8 months while its overall implementation cost is well over $100,000 which is disproportionate to the available resources of small organizations. In another case study it was estimated that CMMI based gap analysis would cost $20,000 for five days and SCAMPI certification audit would cost $30000 for eight days for total of $50,000 .

Another important limitation, of implying CMM/CMMI in small environment, is that many of the practices are not applicable (or not have clear benefit) to small organizations. One peculiar phenomenon of small organizations is their role multiplicities, one person has multiple roles. These overlapping roles make the implementation, of SPI reference models, very difficult for small structure organizations.