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Understanding the gap between software process practices and actual practice in very small companies

Sánchez-Gordón, Mary-Luz orcid logoORCID: 0000-0002-5102-1122 and O'Connor, Rory orcid logoORCID: 0000-0001-9253-0313 (2016) Understanding the gap between software process practices and actual practice in very small companies. Software Quality Journal, 24 (3). pp. 549-570. ISSN 1573-1367

Abstract
This paper reports on a grounded theory to study into software developers’ use of software development process in actual practice in the specific context of very small companies. This study was conducted in three very small software product companies located in Ecuador. The data collection was based on semi-structured qualitative interviews with software project managers, focus group with software developers and was supplemented by literature and documents studies. We interviewed two types of participants (managers and developers), so as to ensure that we elicited a holistic perspective of how they approached the software development process in actual practice. The goal was to study what practices are actually used and their opinion and attitude towards the potential adopting of an international standard (ISO/IEC 29110) specifically designed for very small companies. With the collected data we performed an analysis utilizing Grounded Theory coding techniques, as this methodology promotes the focus on uncovering the real concerns of the participants. This study highlighted three areas of concern: customer, software product and development tasks coordination and tracking. The findings in this study give an insight towards the work products as they relate to software development process practices in very small companies and the important factors that must be considered to assist project success.
Metadata
Item Type:Article (Published)
Refereed:Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:Grounded Theory; Software Process; Software Process Improvement; Very Small Entity; SPI VSE
Subjects:Computer Science > Software engineering
DCU Faculties and Centres:Research Initiatives and Centres > Lero: The Irish Software Engineering Research Centre
DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Engineering and Computing > School of Computing
Publisher:Springer
Official URL:http://dx.doi.org/10.10010.1007/s11219-015-9282-6
Copyright Information:© 2016. The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com
Use License:This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. View License
ID Code:21429
Deposited On:20 Oct 2016 10:25 by Rory O'connor . Last Modified 10 Jan 2023 13:23
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