Around the world, Very Small Entities (VSEs) are very important to the economy because they have an important place contributing to the growing demand for software. This fact allows them to achieve a steady growth in the software market as well as a great responsibility regarding the production of quality software products and services. However, implementing a software process improvement culture in VSEs is not an easy task, and represented a real challenge to software engineering researchers. In this context, the WG24 of ISO/IEC has provided the ISO/IEC 29110 series of standards that are targeted to help VSEs to improve their software development process, their quality and their productivity. But how are the proven practices provided by the ISO/IEC 29110 perceived by VSEs? This paper presents an exploratory analysis of the perception of the practices by a sample of 12 VSEs of Mexico. This research is relevant, because most VSEs do not implement a practice if they do not perceive it as useful. The results of our research highlight the practices that are perceived as either low or high-value. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.