The Evolution of the ISO/IEC 29110 Set of Standards and Guides

While the quality of products is a competitive advantage for very small software development organizations, the usage of Software and Systems Engineering standards amongst such very small organizations is extremely low. A key factor in the literature explaining this lack of quality standards adoption is the perception by small and very small organizations that such standards have been developed for large multi-national companies and not with small and very small organizations in mind. The ISO/IEC 29110 standard is unique amongst software and systems engineering standards, in that the working group (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7 WG 24) mandated to develop a new standard approached industry to conduct a needs assessment and gather actual requirements for a new standard as part of the standards development process. This paper presents a historical perspective behind the development of the ISO/IEC 29110 systems and software engineering standard and its constituent components, including the rationale behind its development and the innovative design of implementation guides to assist very small companies in adopting the standards. Further this paper will present an overview of the various parts of the ISO/IEC 29110 family and briefly present the plans for the future evolution of this series of standards.