Identifying Software Engineering Challenges in Software SMEs: A Case Study in Thailand

Small and medium-sized software enterprises (SSMEs) are a vital part of emerging markets. Due to their size, they are not capable of adopting advanced software engineering techniques or automated software engineering tools in the same way large and ultra-large companies are. We study the software engineering challenges in SSMEs in Thailand, an emerging market in software development, using semi-structured interviews with four SSMEs. After performing a thematic analysis of the interview transcripts, we found a number of common challenges such as lack of testing, code-related issues, and inaccurate effort estimation. We observed that in order to introduce advanced automated software engineering tools and techniques, SSMEs need to adopt contemporary best practices in software engineering like automated testing, continuous integration and automated code review. Moreover, we suggest that software engineering research engage with SSMEs to enable them to improve their knowledge and adopt more advanced software engineering practices.