Software risk assessment is a process of identifying, analyzing, and prioritizing risks. In general, there are large, medium, and small software projects that each of them can be influenced by a risk. Therefore, it needs a unique assessment process of the possible risks that may cause failure or loss of the project if they occur. In the literature, there are wide range of risk assessment researches conducted toward software projects. But there is at least view researches focusing on risk assessment of small and medium software projects. This creates a gap for the risk assessment research field which can cause most of small and medium project without having risk assessment. Therefore, the main focus of the paper is to give researchers an insight of the current level of risk assessment for small and medium software development projects. Finally, some future directions will be discussed hoping to insight the gap of the risk assessment field for small and medium software development projects. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.