Abstract: Today software organizations face the challenge to develop quality products and services to respond to the rising customer requests and to sustain the growing of modern society. Software crisis, a concept coined many years ago but still actual today, synthesizes the chronic inadequacy of the software firm to satisfy customer needs. Software development is a very complex process that has not achieved the maturity level that the market requires; software engineering and specific technologies like object orientation and components promise to raise the process capability, reducing development time and costs and increasing software quality This paper presents a case study concerning the improvement of the software development process of a small Italian firm through the adoption of a component-based approach. It describes the methodology adopted from a technical point of view and it details the impact that the improvement action had on the organization.