Executive Summary
ISO / IEC 29110 is a set of standards and technical reports that has been developed for Very Small Entities (VSE). A VSE is defined as an entity (companies, organizations, departments or projects) that has fewer than 25 people. Most software SMEs fall into the VSE category. The industry recognizes the value of SMEs in contributing products and services.
1. History
ISO 29110 had its origin and development in Mexico at the hands of a small group of people who invested their free time in the search for a standard that would work in the software development environment in Mexico. This is the story of Hanna Oktaba, the Mexican Association for Quality in Software Engineering (AMCIS) and their team of quality-conscious academics and professionals.
2. Background
Increasingly, the software industry represents an economic activity of utmost importance in most countries of the world. In Europe it represents 8% of GDP and 6% of jobs; in Spain this importance is growing even more, due to the current trend towards business models based on software factories and nearshoring. Worldwide, this industry is made up of micro, small and medium-sized software development companies - SMEs - that account for about 90% of formal businesses and that generate between 40% and 50% of total employment. Studies show that software process improvement (SPI) is an activity that small companies want to implement to increase the quality and capacity of their processes and, consequently, the quality of their products and services.This same study shows that, to improve their processes, small companies are using process standards from organizations such as the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), among which are CMMI-DEV, ISO 12207, ISO 15504 and ISO 9001. However, various studies suggest that the application of these standards in SMEs is difficult, since it involves a large investment in money, time and resources, since these models are aimed at large organizations. In addition, the recommendations of these models are complex to apply and the return on investment occurs in the long term. Likewise, in small companies the application of these models is further aggravated, since there is an important "cultural" problem when it is necessary to "import" and adopt, without further ado,models created for other types of organizations; If the process does not “match” the culture of the organization, it will be rejected by the organizational “body”, as happens in organ transplants. A similar problem was exposed in the research, which highlighted the importance of cultural differences in the success of software process improvement between companies in the US and Europe.
In addition, small companies need efficient software engineering practices tailored to their size and type of business to build their products.
In this sense, and to support small companies in their process improvement efforts, ISO has established the SC7-WG24 working group, whose objective is that its software process standards (or adaptations of these) can be applied to small software developers. This group established a common framework to describe evaluable software lifecycle profiles for use at Very Small Enterprises (VSE, an organization of less than 25 employees). These profiles were published in 2010 under the name ISO / IEC 29110.
3. Development of the theme
3.1. The working group WG 24.
ISO was born in 1947 to facilitate international coordination of technical standards in different fields of industry. All those countries in the world that so desire can be members of ISO, represented through their national standardization body, for example: ANSI (American National Standards Institute) for the USA or AENOR (Spanish Association for Standardization and Certification) for Spain. Standards development work is entrusted to Technical Committees (TC), which are usually subdivided into Subcommittees (SC) and these, in turn, into Working Groups (WG) to develop specific topics.
In some areas, ISO collaborates with other organizations; Thus, in the field of information technology, it forms, together with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC1), which is divided into several subcommittees, among them, the SC7 of Software and Systems Engineering., which has different working groups (WG), such as WG 24. The WG 24 group was born in the plenary session of SC7 in Finland in 2005 with the purpose of managing and developing the work to achieve the following objectives:
- Make current software engineering standards more accessible to small businesses Provide documentation that requires minimal adaptation effort Provide harmonized documentation integrating available standards, such as process, evaluation, quality, and modeling standards, as well as work products, Deliverables and tools Take into account, if necessary, the notions of maturity and capacity levels presented in ISO / IEC 15504 and CMMI.
Based on the work of the WG 24 group, aimed at satisfying these objectives, a set of preliminary technical reports has been developed that are the basis on which the ISO / IEC 29110 standard is structured.
The Peruvian Technical Standard (2011) emphasizes that the NTP describes the architecture of the software life cycle processes, but does not specify the details of how to implement or carry out the activities and tasks included in the processes.
Then the need arises to use a model that can guide the institutions of the National Information System in compliance with the Peruvian Technical Standard in their Software development projects.
4. Success stories
Sistemas MIG is the first information technology company in Latin America specialized in meeting the needs of travel agencies and wholesale tourism operators.
Company @magia digital officially received its Certificate of Conformity from the certification on Software Engineering, Process Models and evaluation for software development and maintenance, they have the quality certification in their developments and processes. Now in pinera in development of information systems.
Contributions
Innovation: With the Certification of this Standard, the company innovates with the Quality, Research and Development of its processes in its software. They are also recognized for services and have access to the market more easily. Technological: It helps companies to have quality software and computer services, it is specially trained for programs to improve software processes.
Social: when a company is certified with iso 29110 it gives assurance that its services are of quality and its products follow a standard.
Spiritual: Well, we rejoiced a lot when the brothers came and gave testimony of your truth and how to walk in the truth.
5. Conclusions
The objectives that ISO intends to achieve with the creation of the international standard ISO / IEC 29110 would address the problem that surrounds small companies in the software development sector in the implementation of current process improvement models. This standard can be the solution to a multitude of small companies, since its purpose is, as previously stated, to make the current Software engineering standards more accessible to this type of company, adapting them to their size and business needs., which is important for their survival in the markets and to achieve competitiveness, facing problems such as the growing globalization of markets and the technological changes that are taking place.
6. References
- NORMA TÉCNICA NTP-RT- ISO / IEC TR 29110-5-1-2 NORMA PERUANA.Dyba, T., «An Empirical Investigation of the Key Factors for Success in Software Process Improvement», IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 31, no. 5, pp. 410- 424, 2005 SEI, CMMI for Development. Version 1.2. Technical Report CMU / SEI-2006-TR-008, Software Engineering Institute, 2006.IBM. (2003). Rational Unified Process. Europe: RationalUnified Process.zipISO / IEC TR 29110-3, "Software Engineering - Life Cycle Profiles for Small Organizations (VSEs) - Part 3: Evaluation Guide." Geneva: International Organization for Standardization (ISO), 2011. Pino, F., F. Garcia, and M. Piattini (2006). Systematic review of software process improvement in micro, small and medium-sized companies. Spanish Magazine of Innovation, Quality and Software Engineering (REICIS). Vol.2 (1) April pp. 6-23.
