Industry recognizes that very small enterprises (VSE), that develop parts involving software components are very important to the economy. These parts are often integrated into products of larger enterprises. Failure to deliver a quality product on time and within budget threatens the competitiveness of both organizations. One way to mitigate these risks is to haveall suppliers of a product chain put recognized engineering practices in place. Many international standards and models such as ISO/IEC12207 or CMMI have been developed to capture proven engineering practices. However, these standards were not designed for very small development organizations, those with less than 25 employees, and are consequently difficult to apply in such settings. An ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7 Working Group has been established to address these difficulties by producing a software engineering standard tailored to VSE.