ANATOMY OF A

SOFTWARE
HOUSE
Structural Organization of Software
Companies Around!

Course Instructors: Iqra Obaid & Sameen S. Saeed || professional Practices,Ethics &
1
Issues in Software Engineering
What is Anatomy?

Study of
■ Structure
■ Organization
■ Internal working
■ Hierarchy chart

Course Instructors: Iqra Obaid & Sameen S. Saeed || professional

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Practices,Ethics & Issues in Software Engineering
Anatomy may look like

Course Instructors: Iqra Obaid & Sameen S. Saeed || professional

3
Practices,Ethics & Issues in Software Engineering
Or like this… There are teams out there!

Course Instructors: Iqra Obaid & Sameen S. Saeed || professional

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Practices,Ethics & Issues in Software Engineering
What is software house

■ A software house is a company that primarily provides

software products. These companies may specialize in
business or consumer software or software-as-a-service
(SaaS) products. The common definition is that the
company is mainly invested in developing and distributing
software products. (techopedia)

Course Instructors: Iqra Obaid & Sameen S. Saeed || professional

5
Practices,Ethics & Issues in Software Engineering
What is software house(cont..)

■ A company that writes and cells software (Cambridge Dictionary)

■ A company or set up that is committed to software development,
testing and maintenance( based on observation of your instructor)

■How you would like to define it

based on your knowledge,
observation and/or experience?

Course Instructors: Iqra Obaid & Sameen S. Saeed || professional

6
Practices,Ethics & Issues in Software Engineering
Types of ■ Project oriented companies
■ Product oriented companies
Software ■ IT service providers

Companies ■ Software enterprises

A software house can

There are many types of software
companies and there is so much have multiple qualities
diversity in software development
industry
at time as well. Say, for
example, product
oriented and project
oriented divisions/
teams may co-exist.
Course Instructors: Iqra
Obaid & Sameen S. Saeed ||
professional Practices,
Ethics & Issues in Software 7
Engineering
Project Oriented Companies
Projects are their lifeline !!
Search for project

Requirement Analysis and design

Modules assigned to developers/teams

Software release

Teams/developers move to new

projects
Course Instructors: Iqra Obaid & Sameen S. Saeed || professional
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Practices,Ethics & Issues in Software Engineering
Product Oriented Companies
Run on ideas!!
■ Create projects rather than hunting for them
■ Take up software product idea
■ Transform their idea into product
■ Once a product is live, bugs, new versions, even more ideas and
product growth etc.
■ Make large profits by implementing their ideas.

Course Instructors: Iqra Obaid & Sameen S. Saeed || professional

9
Practices,Ethics & Issues in Software Engineering
IT service providers

■ Something other than software development finally exists as a major

role in such kind of software companies.
■ Focus on business, income generation and software usage statistics
mainly
■ Usually a part of large production unit.
■ Usually they don’t develop their software project/product and
outsource it to the other project oriented companies.
■ Examples call centers, telecom services, network services, industries
etc

Course Instructors: Iqra Obaid & Sameen S. Saeed || professional

10
Practices,Ethics & Issues in Software Engineering
Software Enterprises

■ Dedicated to some enterprises

■ Usually focus on what company wants, as usually enterprises now
have their own software house/ team of developers.
■ From requirement to development and business analysis they are
dedicated to what that enterprise needs.

Course Instructors: Iqra Obaid & Sameen S. Saeed || professional

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Practices,Ethics & Issues in Software Engineering
Types of Software Companies
(yet another view point)
■ Large and globally renowned companies producing COTS e.g. Oracle,
Microsoft, Adobe.
■ Involved in specialized COTS small to middle sized software houses
etc. You may think of the software organizations out there in your
country.
■ SaaS providers e.g. Google, Facebook etc.
■ Software house dealing with bespoke software.

Course Instructors: Iqra Obaid & Sameen S. Saeed || professional

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Practices,Ethics & Issues in Software Engineering
You are encouraged to come up
with more examples/ types of
software houses.
Better consult team members for
this activity.

Course Instructors: Iqra Obaid & Sameen S. Saeed || professional

13
Practices,Ethics & Issues in Software Engineering
 Let’s randomly pick up some
chunks of a software
organization CEO
Leader
s Network
of Engineers
o a rd rs Mark
n der B
e c to e
Offic ting ase
Fou b
Dir
a
ers Dat gners
i
D es
Graphic
Designers ct Quality Assurance Engineers
Proje ers
g
Mana
lop
ev e
ger
D
s Data Entry ana
er RM
Chief Financial Specialist H Chief Legal
Officer Course Instructors: Iqra Obaid & Sameen S. Saeed || professional
Practices,Ethics & Issues in Software Engineering Officer 14
Mindmill Software Ltd.(Established 1993)
An Indian Software House
BESPOKE APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

BANKING AND ERP PRODUCTS

INVOICE MATCHING SERVICES

LIBRARY AND DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS

INSTITUTE MANAGEMNT SYSTEMS

CONSULTING SERVICES

MANAGED CLINET SERVICES

Course Instructors: Iqra Obaid & Sameen S. Saeed || professional

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Practices,Ethics & Issues in Software Engineering
Let’s focus anatomy of bespoke
application development section

Course Instructors: Iqra Obaid & Sameen S. Saeed || professional

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Practices,Ethics & Issues in Software Engineering
To be continued..

Course Instructors: Iqra Obaid & Sameen S. Saeed || professional

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Practices,Ethics & Issues in Software Engineering