Applying international software engineering standards in very small enterprises

At a time when software quality is increasingly becoming a subject of concern, and process approaches are maturing and gaining acceptance in companies, the use of International Organization for Standardization (ISO) systems and software engineering standards remains limited to a few of the most popular ones. However, these standards were not written for enterprises with fewer than 25 employees in mind. As they are difficult to apply in such settings, a new international standardization project has been mandated to address some of those difficulties by developing profiles and by providing guidance for compliance with ISO software engineering standards in very small enterprises (VSEs). A survey was conducted to ask very small enterprises about their utilization of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC71 information technology (IT) standards and to collect data to identify problems and potential solutions to help them apply standards.