Background. Resource-constrained environments are commonly found in software engineering and mean limited staffing, budgets, and more limitations, making it challenging to stay competitive. Software process improvement, SPI, is a way to improve the situation, but traditional SPI has been shown not to fit smaller enterprises and other environments where resources are constrained. Inductive assessment frameworks, such as iFLAP might be more suitable since their feature is to find improvements based on the individual situation.

Objectives. This study aims to find if the iFLAP framework could be used in microenterprises, a special case of a resource-constrained environment with few staff and teams. One goal is to find how much effort the assessment with iFLAP requires. This research should also compare improvements in the software development process proposed by one person with improvements found by the iFLAP process. The final goal is to evaluate the effects of implementing an improvement plan based on the iFLAP assessment.

Methods. An action research was performed in two iterations where the first iteration was to assess the current situation and interview the participants to elicit improvement categories. Then the improvements were validated through data triangulation, prioritized, and identified dependencies. The next iteration of the research was to plan improvement, and then implement a part of the plan for one month of evaluation. Finally, the participants had a short retrospective interview.

Results. The assessment took 38 hours and identified the most important improvement areas: testing method, task management, and process improvement. Compared to that, a one-person proposal yielded the improvement areas of problem tracking, test management, and prioritization. Finally, the effects noted from the evaluation of the improvement plan were that communication had increased and there was a perception that the improvement plan was relevant to the process. However, involving whole the team and having short concise steps are crucial improvements to the proposed improvement strategy.

Conclusions. iFLAP might be suitable for performing improvement assessments in resource-constrained environments. It should be noted that it requires a continuous effort for a longer time to notice significant changes. The importance lies in that the process should be improved in small steps, and people, motivation, and collaboration are vital for its success.