COMPETISOFT: An Improvement Strategy for Small Latin-American Software Organizations

Abstract

From the beginning of the 21st century onwards, the software engineering community (industry and researchers) has expressed a special interest in software process improvement (SPI) for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This growing interest is due to the fact that the software industry in most countries has an industrial backcloth, made up mainly of small and medium software organisations which favour the growth of their national economies. In order to fortify these kind of organisations, efficient strategies, practices, or guides to tailor SPI to their size and type of business are needed. Therefore, in this chapter, the COMPETISOFT project is presented. The COMPETISOFT project’s main aim is to provide the software industry in Latin America with a reference framework for software process improvement and certification, which will enable it to be more competitive in the global market.