Using software inspection as a catalyst for SPI in a small company

Process improvement activities in small and medium size enterprises (SME) are challenging due to small number of personnel and projects, people have to perform in a variety of roles. Assigning process improvement activities to the overburdened personnel may be seen as a threat to ongoing projects. Both management and staff should become convinced of the benefits of the improvement actions before taking the first step of the process. Even in this situation the software inspection provides a tempting starting point for process improvement. It is a focused and well defined subprocess and enables high return on investment benefits even in short period use. Our experiment in a small software company confirms that software inspection provides the justified starting point for process improvement. By means of the inspection maturity model the company recognises the weak points in their review practice and inspection patterns help in discovery of improvement actions.