Overview
ISO/IEC 29110-5-4:2025 - Systems and software engineering - Life cycle profiles for very small entities (VSEs) - Part 5-4: Agile software development guidelines - provides practical, lightweight guidance to help very small entities (VSEs, up to 25 people) adopt and reinforce an agile software development environment. It is intended for VSEs that do not develop business‑ or safety‑critical products and builds on the ISO/IEC 29110 series to map agile practices to VSE‑appropriate lifecycle profiles.
Key topics
- Scope and applicability: tailored guidance for VSEs, with normative references, defined terms and diagramming/definition conventions.
- Agile process structure: two core processes - agile project management and agile software implementation - described with purposes, expected outcomes and overviews.
- Event‑based workflow: prescriptive guidance for agile events commonly used by VSEs, including:
- Project vision meeting
- Estimation meeting
- Sprint planning
- Sprint execution
- Daily scrum
- Sprint review
- Sprint retrospective
The standard documents justifications, overviews and task-level guidance for each event and maps events to expected lifecycle outcomes.
- Roles and responsibilities: concise role descriptions adapted for very small teams.
- Work products and templates: descriptions of required/recommended work products plus informative annex with example templates.
- Supporting material: annexes covering popular agile methods, and the development rationale for the guidelines.
Practical applications
- Adopting agile in VSEs: VSEs can use this document to implement an agile lifecycle that is consistent with ISO/IEC 29110 profiles without the overhead of larger standards.
- Process reinforcement: teams can formalize agile events, roles and work products to improve predictability, traceability and quality of small software projects.
- Onboarding and audits: provides concrete templates and outcomes that help VSEs demonstrate conformance for customer quality reviews or internal assessments.
- Tool and method selection: annex material and event mappings help VSEs choose appropriate lightweight practices (e.g., sprint cadences, estimation techniques) and integrate them with their lifecycle.
Who should use it
- Small software companies, micro‑teams and startups (≤25 people)
- Project leads, scrum masters and technical managers in VSEs
- Consultants and assessors helping VSEs align agile practices with international standards
- Tool vendors and methodology providers targeting small teams
Related standards
- ISO/IEC 29110 series (general VSE lifecycle profiles)
- ISO/IEC/IEEE 12207 and 15288 (for organizations outgrowing VSE guidance)
Keywords: ISO/IEC 29110-5-4, agile software development guidelines, VSE, very small entities, sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint retrospective, work products, ISO standards for VSE.
Open preview (PDF)Systems and software engineering — Life cycle profiles for very small entities (VSEs) — Part 5-4: Agile software development guidelines
