Abstract Gamification is an attractive strategy for different contexts, including software process improvement, where it presents positive results associated with increased factors such as motivation and others classified into social and human factors. Such factors are required to improve software processes in the automotive industry due to the influence of changes in the conditions and the behavior of individuals. However, the treatment of gamification strategies requires rigor at a scientific level. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze critical dimensions such as the gamification maturity level, the ability to intervene, and the influence of social and human factors. Such analysis is motivated by the relationship between social and human factors and the success of a process improvement. The above justifies the researchers' interest in this article in analyzing a gamification strategy implemented in the automotive industry from such dimensions. Therefore, this article presents the analysis from the point of view of developing software‐controlled systems in automobiles. Besides, it uses a deductive approach to conduct this analysis to abstract all the design aspects of a strategy created and implemented in a software development automotive environment. One of the most representative findings of this study is the strategy's capacity to promote SHF, which identifies motivation, commitment, team cohesion, emotional intelligence, and autonomy.

Abstract In recent years, stakeholders expect the delivery of new features almost every day to give fast feedback about changes or issues in software projects. To achieve this, they have opted to try new practices such as those from DevOps to improve their processes. Organizations such as IBM, Facebook, Amazon, and so on are implementing a DevOps culture. However, for small organizations, which are a large majority in the software development market, it is complicated to adopt DevOps because there is no guide to follow. Organizations have experienced issues trying to implement a DevOps approach, mainly for reasons such as a lack of process, guidance, or uncoordinated activities among organizations. Moreover, some organizations have a wrong understanding of DevOps: as just a set of automation tools to achieve a continuous release. This paper presents a guide to implement or reinforce a DevOps approach. Besides, the results of a case study of implementing the guide in a small organization are included. These results have shown that the guide helped the team: to identify its gaps toward the implementation of a DevOps approach; to have a better understanding of DevOps; and to facilitate the DevOps implementation providing a set of tasks, roles, and metrics.

Abstract Best practices of software development and software process improvement (SPI) are people‐centred. Both have a high level of influence of social and human factors inherent to the individuals involved in these processes. At the same time, software process improvement is inherent to the change of the conditions and the behaviour of individuals. In this work, the authors show the results of applying a deductive approach for a method based on gamification and social and human factors to influence the productivity of the software development team. The results show that it is possible to abstract all the design aspects of an existing strategy called Interplanetary Mission and identify the social and human factors involved in change resistance in SPI initiatives. The strategy execution results show that gamification strategies could help to mitigate change resistance in SPI initiatives for software development teams and their productivity, understanding this term in software engineering context as the ratio between output and input within the software development production process.

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.

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.

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.