From Scrum to Solo: How Small Is Too Small a Team to Still Call It Software Engineering?

Software engineering practices have historically been oriented towards teams of varying size and the justification for their use made in terms of team operations. However, much software development is also carried out by individuals without such a team context. They may be solo developers working as independents, sometimes part-time entrepreneurs or they may indeed be embedded in a 'team' but they are the only software developer in a mixed bunch. The latter is common in scientific organisations such as CSIRO. Some of today's 'Agile' development processes can be adapted to the solo developer and yield a significant improvement in productivity and risk control. In particular, version control, test-driven development and continuous delivery are beneficial practices. This presentation will make the case that 'software engineering' can be applied to an activity carried out by an individual and provide details on the practices that work. It includes discussion of the 'diary-driven development' lightweight approach to documentation and providing a technique of introspection to help 'peer-review yourself'. The experience reported on also covers what happens when you try to take these techniques successfully applied by an individual and scale them up for adoption by a typical small team. Adding relevance to a non-technical management audience, the presentation looks at these practices from a risk-mitigation viewpoint. It will help validate them as worthwhile for solo developers and debunk the idea that 'software engineering is only for big teams'.