A DISCUSSION ON ASSURING SOFTWARE QUALITY IN SMALL AND MEDIUM SOFTWARE ENTERPRISES: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION

Abstract

Under the studies of general core activities including software inspection, review and testing to achieve quality objectives in small-medium size enterprises (SMEs), the paper presents a contemporary view of such companies against quality measures. The results from a local empirical investigation of quality standards in the Turkish software industry are reported. Around 150 software companies have been approached from which 17 detailed feedback inform that in order to ensure software quality, standards including internationally recognized International Standards Organization (ISO) and Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) are given credit. However the substantial workload and resources required to obtain them are also reported as serious; downscaled frameworks of such large models proposed in the literature are not well known by the SMEs either. The paper also discusses "work around" that bypasses such standards to ease delivery of products while keeping certificates as labels just to acquire new jobs for the business.