Towards successful subcontracting for software in small to medium-sized enterprises

Many small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that specialise in electrical or communications engineering are challenged by the increasing importance of software in their products. Although they have a strong interest in subcontracting competent partners for software development tasks, they tend to refrain from doing so. In this paper we identify three main reasons for this situation, propose an approach to overcome some of them and state remaining challenges. Those reasons are situated in the intersection of software engineering and jurisprudence and therefore need to be addressed in an integrated and multidisciplinary fashion.