Software Process Improvement in small organizations using gradual evaluation schema

This paper relates a technology transfer experience which aims at supporting the introduction of software process improvement in small businesses, small organizations and/or small projects. The experience is born from a European interregional collaboration between two university research teams (France and Belgium) and a public technology center (Luxembourg). One of the contributions of this experience is the design of a Software Process Improvement approach particularly adapted to small units on the one hand and to regional context, on the other hand. The proposed approach is gradual. It is based on three nested evaluation models ranging from an extremely simplified model (the micro-evaluation model) to a complete standard model supporting SPICE. The intermediate model, called the mini-evaluation model, can be viewed as a tailoring of SPICE and can be used by itself as a definitive model by small businesses and small organizations.