SMOP was among the "games" described in an article as paralleling the
Games People Play identified by Dr.
Eric Berne in the field of self-help psychology. The game essentially consists of proposing seemingly simple adjustments to a design, leading to unexpected consequences and delays. Alternative phrases such as
simple matter of software or
small matter of software are occasionally used in the same manner. However, the phrase is also used without irony to indicate that straightforward
software development is all that is required to resolve some issue. This usage is often invoked when the speaker wants to contrast the implied ease of software changes with the suggested greater difficulty of making a hardware change or a change to an
industry standard. This non-ironic usage is more often invoked by
senior management and
hardware engineers, than it is by software engineers. The term was also explored and expanded upon by computer scientist
Bonnie Nardi in her 1993 book
A Small Matter of Programming: Perspectives on End User Computing. ==See also==