How software organizations are using the ISO/IEC 29110 standard's processes: a survey of the state of the art and practice

ISO/IEC 29110 was developed containing a set of industrially validated practices that can potentially be adopted by software Very Small Entities (VSE). VSEs usually have characteristics that differentiate them from organizations of different sizes, such as extremely limited resources and informal project management processes, tending to adopt Agile methods and having an historical resistance to the adoption of standards, that are in general developed for large organizations. In this sense, our research question arises: "How are software organizations using the ISO/IEC 29110 practices?". To answer this question, a Systematic Mapping Study (SM), and a Survey with software organizations were carried out in order to identify the state of the art and the state of the practice in relation to the use of the standard's practices. The SM identified 21 primary studies reporting the use of the standard in hundreds of software organizations with positive results such as organizational learning, process improvement, improved communication, and also some negative results, such as deployment difficulties in technical areas and the need for additional time and resources. The Survey carried out with 23 software companies identified that, in general, companies do not explicitly know the content of the standard, but partially carry out, in accordance with the standard, practices related to planning, monitoring, control and execution of a project plan, and do not carry out requirements analysis or architecture and detailed design as defined in the standard.