Abstract Around the world, the importance of Very Small Entities (VSEs), organisations having up to 25 people, has been constantly increasing. Worldwide, VSEs represent over 92% of the software industry. Therefore, two main needs can be highlighted: a) providing VSEs with resources to produce high‐quality software, and b) training software engineering undergraduates in proven practices to produce high‐quality software within the given schedule and budget. A logical way to meet these needs is transfering proven practices provided by software engineering standards. However, transferring the knowledge of software engineering standards is not always an easy task. The ISO/IEC 29110 is a series of international standards and guides that provide codified knowledge related to the software development process. The series was specifically developed to be used by VSEs. This study presents an exploratory analysis, conducted in 12 Mexican VSEs, which implemented the software Basic profile of the ISO/IEC 29110, to identify the pace at which they can adopt this standard to their environment. Besides, the benefits and difficulties encountered are provided. The results can be relevant for other VSEs interested in implementing this standard. Even if the exploratory analysis was performed in the VSEs of Mexico, this analysis can be of interest in other countries. The results obtained can help other VSEs that are interested in the adoption of this international standard to reduce the barriers to a successful implementation.

Very small entities (VSEs) of software development have had a significant demand and economic impact in recent years, because most of them are the software producers for medium and big companies in order to satisfy the growing demand of software. In this context, it is important to ensure that they produce quality software to successfully meet the market needs. This task relies on having the knowledge and the experience to implement proven practices, which are contained in quality models and standards, to be able to develop quality software, while increasing their productivity and keeping or reducing their costs. A description of the implementation of ISO/IEC 29110 in Mexico, specifically at Zacatecas State is presented. This implementation was done as a strategy to increase the competitiveness of them. The study includes both, the strategy established to deploy the knowledge and the method followed to implement the ISO/IEC 29110 in four VSEs that uses scrum methodology as agile approach. The results show that the implementation of ISO/IEC 29110 was easy and with a high acceptance due to the benefits detected in the reinforcement of the VSEs’ processes without changing the way they work and solving their problems.

Abstract We are living in an age of growing demand for software products. This growing demand creates opportunities for very small entities (VSEs) to not only survive but also flourish. In this context, VSEs need to produce high‐quality products to meet market needs. However, in their quest to produce high‐quality software, VSEs need to overcome the challenge of implementing international standards, which they find difficult to do because of lack of knowledge and practical experience. This paper provides an analysis performed to 13 teams of VSEs, using different life cycles, which achieved the implementation of the ISO/IEC 29110, to analyze the effort each team invests to implement the best practices provided by the standard. Besides, the paper provides an analysis of the difficulties, and the benefits of using the six‐step method are included. This analysis is of interest because software engineering knowledge developed by researchers should be transferred to the industry to reduce the gap between them. The results highlight, on the one hand, the practices representing more effort for teams by life cycle. On the other hand, the results highlight the six‐step method that allowed the 13 teams to achieve a high level of coverage of the ISO/IEC 29110 international standard.

Summary Software is everywhere. From simple applications to complicated pieces of software, these software products and services facilitate our day‐to‐day activities, but they also need to be high‐quality products in order to guarantee their reliability, security, good performance, and usability. In this context, software development organizations have highlighted that a product's quality largely depends on the quality of the processes followed to build the software. The Software Process Improvement (SPI) initiative is a set of best practices designed to improve software processes through the evaluation of the current organizational practices, competencies, and experiences. However, these SPI initiatives have presented some issues and challenges that complicate their success and preclude software organizations to get improvements. Most of these issues are related to how organizations manage, analyze, and use their own data to improve software processes. The purpose of this paper is to analyze if the three most used software repositories cover the key requirements to implement a data analysis model for implementing SPI initiatives. The results show that the three repositories analyzed as they are do not cover the complete requirements to implement a model highlighting the aspects to be improved.

Gamification is used in several contexts, such as marketing, education, and public health. The authors implement gamification to promote a dynamic environment relative to software process improvement. However, well‐established theoretical guidelines to design gamified experiences are lacking. The authors propose a framework to assess gamified environments, identify and adopt gamification principles, as well as design gamified activities. The proposed framework helps users create gamified experiences that satisfy the purposes, goals, principles, and elements defined as fundamental gamification components. Here, the authors apply the proposed framework to a video scrum simulation to assess the adoption of gamification principles. The case study includes identification of gamification principles incorporated in the video scrum and their relationships to the elements of the mechanics, dynamics, and emotions framework. The results show that the game elements defined in the design layer of the proposed framework were realised in the video scrum simulation.

Nowadays computer games are applied beyond entertainment. Gamification, the application of game elements in non‐game environments supports behavioural studies in different disciplines including software engineering, the area in which collaborative work has become a fundamental key. The most used gamification elements in software development environments were analysed from two perspectives: (i) team building or reinforcement activities; and (ii) regarding a set of people's interactive styles. Then, interactive styles with software engineering roles were related in order to be able to identify scenarios that conform a model to build highly effective teams. The three analyses together allow identifying proper gamification elements for modelling scenarios to support the creation of highly effective teams in the software development domain.

The video game industry is becoming increasingly important due to its revenues and growing capabilities. User eXperience (UX) is an important factor which contributes to the acceptance of a video game. The UX is usually assessed at the end of the development process, and for this reason it is difficult to ensure an adequate level of interactive experience between computer game and players. Cancelation of projects or even bankruptcy of a company can be caused by bad management of UX. In this paper, we propose the game experience management (GEM), a method to evaluate, manage, measure and track the UX from early stages of computer game development. In order to compare the proposal against a method comprised by conventional approaches, teams of master degree students were formed for developing six tower defense games for teaching basic multiplication operations; surveys were conducted to compare the UX of games. In this setting, we find that games developed with GEM significantly improve UX by increasing the puppetry and consequently reducing player frustration.

Organizational software processes improvement offers a key opportunity for organizations to be more efficient and effective. However, in most cases software process improvement initiatives in organizations become a path full of obstacles. As a consequence, organizations worldwide are adopting international standards and models in an effort to improve their software processes. Nevertheless, the difficulty of using multi-model improvement environments for the implementation of software processes improvements is well-known. In this context, effective integration of models and standards is a tool that enhances information sharing and communication. Integration can play a crucial role for the implementation of multi-model environments in order to be used as a reference model in software process improvements. This paper shows a methodology that enables organizations to establish a multi-model environment based on their business goals and on the results of a case study focused on implementing improvements in project management processes. Finally, results obtained after applying the methodology and future research line related to a platform for providing knowledge management and information sharing are included.

Software organizations are moving to a process oriented approach to develop its products. Many improvement technologies have emerged as a response in a multimodel environment. The term improvement technology is used to refer in general to the long list of reference models, standards, best practices, regulatory policies and other types of practices that an organization may use simultaneously (i.e. CMMI, ISO 15504, ISO 9001, Bootstrap and others). The simultaneous use of multiple improvement technologies is causing many problems such as the handling of heterogeneous improvement technologies for deriving processes. Although process architecture has been considered as a means for harmonizing these technologies and assisting process stakeholders do their job, it is unclear how to design a process architecture that supports a multimodel environment. In this article, we identify and analyze main problems in a multimodel environment and critical issues in process architecture area. As a result of this, we derive a set of criteria, as groundwork to design a process architecture in a multimodel environment.

SUMMARY This paper describes a multi‐model methodology that implements a smooth and continuous process improvement, depending on the organization's business goals and allowing users to establish their improvement implementation pace. The methodology focuses on basic process components known as ‘best practices’. Besides, it covers following the topics: knowledge management and change management. The methodology description and the results of a case study on project management process are included. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.