View publication
| Title | A Visual Instrument to Support the Qualification of Customer Requests in Micro- and Small Software Enterprises |
| Authors | Carlos Vásquez, Sergio Ochoa, Tomás Vera, Daniel Perovich |
| Publication date | 2026 |
| Abstract | Qualifying customer requests quickly and accurately is critical for software development companies, since it directly affects their capability to grow and survive in an increasingly competitive market. Successfully qualifying these requests demands people with expertise in the technical and business areas being addressed. This requirement imposes a major challenge to Micro and Small Software Enterprises (MSSEs), since they frequently lack such specialized personnel. In order to help MSSEs deal with it, this paper proposes a visual instrument designed to capture and analyze key information from customer requests, and reduce the need to count on expert personnel to qualify them. The instrument was empirically evaluated within micro-enterprises enrolled in a marketplace that provides software development services, as well as in a small software company with over a decade of market experience. The results show that using the visual instrument, the MSSEs significantly reduce the time demands on experts. In addition, it makes the qualifying process of customer requests more feasible and scalable for MSSEs. |
| Pages | 366-371 |
| Conference name | International Conference on Software Engineering Research, Management and Applications |
| Publisher | IEEE Computer Society Press (Los Alamitos, CA, USA) |
| Reference URL |
|