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Summary: An important assertion made in the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC7 WG24 project to develop ‘profiles’ for very small entities (i.e. <= 25 persons) is that such entities are generally not able to support processes of the type described in ISO/IEC 12207 or ISO/IEC 15288. This paper provides an alternative perspective centred on the role of the customer within the systems engineering process. It is asserted in this paper that the key consideration in determining the extent of required process formality is rather a function related to the degree of assurance required of the developed product, rather than measures strongly tied to the size of the entity.
Keywords: ISO 9000, ISO/IEC 12207, ISO/IEC 15288, ISO/IEC 29110-1