Implementation of a Software Quality Improvement Project in an SME: A Before and After Comparison

Software process management is a crucial task in small and medium size enterprises (SME) due to scarce resources, small development teams and heavy workload. We have worked with an SME to institutionalize process improvement practices, aligned with CMMI maturity levels 2 and 3. Main goals of this project were to achieve effective resource management and increase the product quality with fewer defects. The project had two phases: Phase I conducts an "as-is analysis" in order to set well-defined processes. Phase II measures the software reliability in terms of time/effort allocation and defect rates. Our before and after analysis showed that: a) time allocation for requirements, coding and testing steps improved from (4%, 31%, 65%) to (47%, 20%, 33%), b) defect rates decreased from 11% to 6.5%, c) estimated testing effort also decreased from 47% to 30%.