National Autonomous

S oftware constitutes an important industry for developing Latin Amer-ican countries. The small- and medium-sized companies that accountfor up to half the industry’s employment face serious problems, however,when they start to grow. In many cases, the absence of a visible soft-ware-development process creates chaos for the entire organization, including its products.1 The companies ’ lack of competitiveness seriously limits their growth.2 USING EXISTING REFERENCE MODELS Recently, small Latin American software companies have tried to improve their software processes ’ capability as a fundamental step toward increasing product quality. They’ve addressed two main concerns: • their image, a key factor for establishing and maintaining a position in the global marketplace; and • the efficiency and effectiveness of software process management. Many of these businesses deploy reference models proposed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), the Capability Maturity Model Institute (CMMI), or the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). However, these ref-erence models ’ complex recommendations and significant time and resource com-mitment make their application difficult for small organizations.3-