Do we ever really scale down? [Software management]
John Boddie · IEEE Software · 2000
The argument that scaling down project engineering practices is just as difficult as scaling them up is, in polite terms, specious. The practice of building software has always involved an initial effort to decompose the task into manageable chunks-and from there, we always scale up. The difference between engineering large and small projects focuses on the issues of coordination and communication between the manageable chunks and the people working on them. Practices at the “chunk” level reflect a combination of the organization's culture and the project manager's personal preferences. In other words, we start by decomposing the problem and then build the management structure necessary to bring the various pieces together. We start small and scale up, so where does “scaling down” enter the picture? This issue is largely of concern only to those who value the purity of their methodologies above the practical needs of producing software