Evaluating VSEs Viewpoint and Sentiment Towards the ISO/IEC 29110 Standard: A Two Country Grounded Theory Study

The ISO/IEC 29110 standard has at its core a Management and Engineering Guide [1] which are targeted at very small entities (enterprises, organizations, departments or projects) having up to 25 people [2], to assist them unlock the potential benefits of using standards which are specifically designed to address their needs. This paper is concerned with understanding the issues that affect the adoption of software process standards by Very Small Entities (VSEs), their needs from process standards and their willingness to engage with the new ISO/IEC 29110 standard in particular. This paper bring together two complimentary studies undertaken in Ireland and Ecuador which pose questions to VSE management regarding opinions, attitude and sentiment towards the adoption of the VSE designed standard ISO/IEC 29110. A series of interviews were untaken in both countries counties with qualitative data analysis utilizing the grounded theory coding mechanisms, to produce a picture of the current situation. This paper serves as a roadmap for both researchers wishing to understand the issues of process standards adoption by very small companies and also for the software process standards community.