Ontology based software development good practices selection for adoption in micro-enterprises

This paper describes an applied research project developed at Departamento de Informatica - Universidade Federal de Vicosa - Brazil, focused on the adoption of software development best practices in micro and small enterprises (MSE) of software, that usually do not have enough professionals, time and budget to target any CMMI levels. The question we tried to answer positively is: how can those companies reach international quality levels in small steps, in order to eventually, lead them to a CMMI levels? Our tested solution consists of an approach that allows the selection of best practices well suited to this kind of enterprise. The approach includes an ontology of software development best practices which are selected based on the enterprise's technical profile. The project is in progress, and we present here first good results.