Browsing by Author "Laitinen, Emma"

Implementing software process improvement (SPI) models or standards can be challenging for a small organization due to their limited resources compared to larger companies. The ISO/IEC 29110 series of systems and engineering standards were designed especially for very small entities (VSEs), i.e. for organizations having up to 25 employees. Company X is a small Finnish software company following a Scrum workflow. At Company X, challenges have been identified in the software testing process. Because of the company’s size, ISO/IEC 29110 out of different SPI standards was identified as a potential fit for improving this process. While the ISO/IEC 29110 standard can be applied to any software life cycle method, including agile, there is no formal guide on how to implement the standard in an agile environment. The aims of this thesis are two-fold: first, to investigate how Scrum corresponds with the standard, and second, to use the standard to identify weak points in Company X’s current software testing process and to identify action points to address them. The mappings between Scrum and the standard were investigated by carrying out a systematic literature review (SLR). A self-assessment and a software testing deployment package provided with the standard were used to assess the current testing process and to identify shortcomings in it. The shortcomings were analyzed and action points feasible in Company X’s context were suggested. The improved process containing the suggested action points was then re-assessed. The SLR yielded only a handful of papers, indicating that the topic of implementing ISO/IEC 29110 into an agile lifecycle in practice is relatively unexplored. The three papers together provided mappings for all three aspects of the standard vs. their counterparts in Scrum: activities, roles, and work products. The baseline assessment of Company X’s current process yielded a score of achieved ‘Partially’ (46,5 %). A set of seven shortcomings were identified in the assessment process and nine action points were suggested to address them. Assessing the improved process improved the score to implemented ‘Fully’ (97 %).