Toward Automated Support for Software Process Improvement Initiatives in Small and Medium Size Enterprises

Software organizations and projects need guidance on "how" to improve software process, not just guidelines on "what" to improve. Improvement models are based on the consensus of a designated working group on how software should be developed or maintained. They are very useful in that they provide general guidelines on where to start improving, and in which order, to people who do not know. However, the majority have only worked in scenarios within large companies. We aim to help small software development organizations adopt an iterative approach by providing a Process Improvement Web-based Tool. This paper presents research into the proposal that a small enterprise may use this tool to define and implement a set of agile project management practices that can be strengthened using the CMMI-DEV 1.2 model as reference.