Learning to Innovate: Methodologies, Tools, and Skills for Software Process Improvement in Spain

Abstract

Using a large sample of Spanish organizations, in this chapter, the authors empirically reveal the state of health of the Spanish software industry in terms of software process improvement, both in the monitoring of working methodologies and the usage of tools, and they provide the necessary information in order to understand the real skills and efforts to improve the quality of products and end-user services. Having found that a significant number of organizations do not have specific training programs or their own software quality department, it is an essential point of departure for professionals to increase awareness of the need to implement quality processes to improve the competitiveness of the company. The state of knowledge of the methodologies aimed at quality and existing national and international standards shows that these are barely known by professionals in Spanish companies, especially among SMEs and micro-enterprises. However, most Spanish small businesses and large enterprises think the CMMI model best suits their needs, both business and technical. This growing interest is the main reason behind the fact that Spain has almost 38% of the European CMMI certifications, including 22 new certifications since 2010, and is the fourth country in the world in terms of number of CMMI appraisals.