Organizational Analysis of Small Software Organizations: Framework and Case Study

Abstract

The intention of this chapter is twofold. On the one hand, I illustrate the complexity of the small software organization, because it is not a reduced version of a large company. Rather, it has very important advantages and challenges. Then, I use organization studies as a multi-disciplinary and multi-paradigmatic link between disciplines, able to reconcile those distinct visions. On the other hand, I open the discussion on the state of crisis affecting software engineering as a discipline. For that, I try to sensitize the reader to the facts surrounding this crisis, but also to the most promising alternative, which is the redefinition of software engineering as a discipline. One of the possible options for that paradigmatic change requires a multi-disciplinary orientation because their positivist roots and the adoption of a constructivist ontology and epistemology facilitating the inclusion of visions non-qualified for a systematic, disciplined and quantitative approach. My position is that only by opening up this discussion is it possible to begin transforming and consolidating software engineering as a strengthened and more terrain-attached discipline because of its powerful theoretical and practical explanatory capacity.