Business success in software SMEs: recommendations for future SPI studies

There is presently insufficient data regarding the relationship between software process improvement (SPI) and business success, a fact which may reduce process prioritisation in software development in practice. To assist future studies examining the relationship between SPI and business success, we developed a new two-phased approach to examining business. The first phase involves the elicitation of business objectives for the forthcoming year, with the second phase determining the extent of achievement of the recorded objectives. At EuroSPI 2011, we described the two-phased approach in detail and reported on the findings from deploying the first phase of the examination to software developing small- and medium-sized enterprises (software SMEs). In this follow-up paper, we report on the findings from the second phase of the investigation in the participating software SMEs, formulating an additional important new recommendation for future studies.