Thinking objectively: software engineering in the small

Reviewer: Andrew Robert Huber

Software engineering at small companies and projects is different from software engineering at large companies. This short article cites four significant areas that the authors claim are largely unaddressed in software engineering work and in the published literature: company size, and development mode, size, and speed. Some of the differences are inherent in small companies and start-ups, such as the lack of data from prior projects for use in cost and schedule estimating. Others relate to the competitive environment of smaller companies. An example cited is software re-use, which may not be an advantage for a start-up, due to its initial higher cost. Most experienced developers will agree that there are differences in the software engineering needs and practices of smaller development groups and projects compared to large systems and contract development work. Most will also agree with the authors' conclusion that existing practices developed for large organizations are inadequate for small organizations. The authors do not really add any new arguments, and they seem to ignore the fact that large companies often face the same difficulties. For example, large organizations generally have the same problem with lack of data when first establishing estimating procedures. Similarly, the added costs of software reuse need to be considered by large organizations as well. The authors also appear to ignore or be unaware of much published work that does address software in the small, such as the Software Engineering Institute's work on the personal software process [1] and the team software process [2].