Providing a starting point to help smes in the implementation of software process improvements

Nowadays software development organizations look for tools and methods that help them maintain their competitiveness. A key approach for organizations in order to achieve this competitiveness is a successful implementation of software process improvement. Unfortunately, most of the times, software process improvement involves a path full of obstacles almost impossible to achieve. The most common and critical problem consists of the selection and application of the right reference model for guiding this implementation. To provide a solution to this problem this paper shows a framework, which aims to set a starting point regarding the model, standard or agile methodology to be used as reference based on the SME actual needs, features and work culture