Software Standards CFICSE 1999 ST01

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Software StandardsCFICSE 1999 ST01

• Major Greg Phillips
• Royal Military College of Canada
• Electrical and Computer Engineering
• greg.phillips_at_rmc.ca
• 01-613-541-6000 ext. 6190

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What are Standards?

• product standards, which prescribe the technical
  characteristics of some artifact
• process standards, which prescribe a method for
  accomplishing a task
• includes formalised life cycle models, quality
  models
• guidelines, which describe a preferred method for
  accomplishing a task
• procedures, which define the implementation of
  process standards or guidelines
• process improvement models
• contractor selection vehicles

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What are they Good For?

• promoting consistency
• providing checklists of practices which (one
  hopes) will ensure quality products
• providing a basis for contracting, by specifying
  that the supplier must conform to some standard
  in performing the work
• serving as an agreed-upon reference for
  identifying best practices and
• serving as a benchmark for measuring current
  performance and indicating required change.

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Who Develops Them?

• military and government agencies
• e.g., US Department of Defense (DoD)
• national standards bodies
• e.g., Canadian Standards Association (CSA),
  American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
• international standards bodies
• e.g., International Standards Organization (ISO),
  International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)
• professional and technical associations
• e.g., Institute of Electrical and Electronic
  Engineers (IEEE), Electronics Industries
  Association (EIA)
• unchartered but widely recognised bodies
• e.g., Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),
  World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

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The Frameworks Quagmire
http//www.software.org/quagmire
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How Does it Work?

• varies widely by standards body
• typically
• establish strategy
• form small working groups
• create draft
• distribute draft
• revise draft
• build test implementation
• revise draft
• implement and enforce standard
• evaluate effectiveness
• periodically update, revise, or retire

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How Much Work Does it Take?

• varies widely by standards body, standard type,
  individual standard
• e.g., ISO 12207 is believed to represent 17000
  person-hours (8.5 person years) of actual labour
  conceived in 1988 and published in 1995

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Contractual Application

• acquisition agency must understand the invoked
  standard
• explicit requirements
• implicit assumptions
• contractor must understand the invoked standard
• level of compliance sometimes difficult to assess
  or enforce
• tailoring essential for most projects

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In-house Adoption

• standards must be mapped to procedures
• procedures must be
• enforced
• supported
• validated
• maintained
• typically enforced by a Software Quality
  Assurance group
• typically supported, validated and maintained by
  a Software Process Group separate from Software
  Quality Assurance
• danger of procedures being imposed ex cathedra
• necessary to shift personnel between development
  and the process group

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Certification

• some standards allow for certification of
  compliance, e.g.,
• ISO 9000 series
• Capability Maturity Model
• certification represents an evaluation, performed
  at an instant in time, by
• an internal assessor or
• a not-completely-disinterested third party
• not a guarantee of performance, but generally an
  indicator

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A Standards Family Tree
MIL-STD -7935
basis of
DoD Software Life Cycle (SWLC) Standards
MIL-STD -498
influenced
DOD-STD -2167A
IEEE 1074
Rev IEEE 1074
IEEE standards for developing LC processes
Rev ISO/IEC 12207
ISO/IEC 12207
ISO standards for LC Processes
J-STD -016
IEEE/EIA commercialisation of DoD SWLC standards
IEEE/EIA 12207
US standards for LC Processes
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Standards You Will See

• In this module
• DOD-STD-2167A
• MIL-STD-498
• IEEE/EIA J-STD-016
• ISO/IEC 12207
• IEEE/EIA 12207
• Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Capability
  Maturity Model (CMM)
• ISO 9000 series
• Elsewhere
• SEI Software Capability Evaluation
• various IEEE quality and configuration management
  standards