Software development maturity evaluation: six cases from Estonian SMEs

Purpose – The software industry, especially software development (SD), in Estonia is at the present moment in the phase of expansion: first level of life cycle of the industry. Initial maturity level of the industry is among other factors characterized by lower maturity level of development process in companies/development teams. The goal of this paper is to analyze the maturity level of SD process in Estonian companies. Usually, poorly managed processes and low‐development performance are the major reasons for overrun deadlines and insufficient competitive advantages. Therefore, improved performance is the key factor of SD industry competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology used in the paper is semi‐structured interviews with experienced software developers/project managers in Estonian SD enterprises. On the basis of the interviews, authors were analyzing the usability of capability maturity model integration (CMMI) in Estonian SD companies to perform/apply the software process improvement (SPI). Findings – Results based on self‐evaluation are describing the current level of SD process maturity in sense of CMMI in Estonian SD enterprises. Also, the difficulties of collecting process performance data were discovered. SD companies did not find it necessary to collect and save development process performance data, such as number of (corrected) errors, number of lines of code, etc. Originality/value – The paper describes structured performance as SD process maturity in sense of CMMI together with development process performance as project characteristics: product quality, cycle‐time, development effort, product maintainability, etc.