Standards Development

Scope

1.1 Overview

This document establishes a common framework for software life cycle processes, with well-defined terminology, that can be referenced by the software industry. It contains processes, activities, and tasks that are to be applied during the acquisition of a software system, product, or service and during the supply, development, operation, maintenance, and disposal of software products. This is accomplished through the involvement of stakeholders, with the goal of achieving customer satisfaction. This document includes those aspects of system definition needed to provide the context for software systems and services. This document also provides processes that can be employed for defining, controlling, and improving software life cycle processes within an organization or a project.

1.2 Purpose

The purpose of this document is to provide a defined set of software life cycle processes to facilitate communication among acquirers, suppliers, and other stakeholders in the life cycle of a software system. This document is written for acquirers of software systems, products, and services and for suppliers, developers, integrators, operators, maintainers, managers, quality assurance managers, and users of software systems and products. It can be used by a single organization in a self-imposed mode or in a multi-party situation. Parties can be from the same organization or from different organizations and the situation can range from an informal agreement to a formal contract. The processes in this International Standard can be used as a basis for establishing business environments, e.g., methods, procedures, techniques, tools. and trained personnel. Annex A provides normative direction regarding the tailoring of these software life cycle processes.

1.3 Applicability

In the context of this document and ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288, Systems and software engineering—System life cycle processes, there is a continuum of human-made systems from those that use little or no software to those in which software is the primary interest. It is rare to encounter a complex system without software, and all software systems require physical system components (hardware) to operate, either as part of the software system-of-interest (SoI) or as an enabling system or infrastructure. Thus, the choice of whether to apply this document for the software life cycle processes, or ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288:2023, depends on the SoI. Processes in both documents have the same process purpose and process outcomes, but differ in activities and tasks to perform software engineering or systems engineering, respectively.

There is a wide variety of software systems in terms of their purpose, domain of application, complexity, size, novelty, adaptability, quantities, locations, life spans and evolution. This document applies to one-of-a-kind software systems, software systems for wide commercial or public distribution, and customised, adaptable software systems. Software includes the software portion of firmware. It applies to a complete stand-alone software system and to software systems that are embedded and integrated into larger more complex and complete systems of systems (SoS). The processes, activities, and tasks of this document can also be applied during the acquisition of a system that contains software, either alone or in conjunction with ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288:2023.

This document applies to the full life cycle of software systems, products, and services, including conception, development, production, utilization, support, and retirement, and to their acquisition and supply, whether performed internally or externally to an organization. The life cycle processes of this document can be applied concurrently, iteratively, and recursively to a software system and incrementally to its elements.

This document may be applied in organizations and software projects using agile approaches and methods as well as in those using other formal engineering approaches. Agile development is one of the most widely used approaches for software development (including software maintenance) because it is believed to be more affordable and to deliver usable products more quickly.

Annex A of this document presents the tailoring process which may be applied to software engineering processes. Annex B identifies examples of artefacts and information items that may be associated with various processes. Annex C provides a process reference model characterized in terms of the process purpose and the process outcomes that result from the successful execution of the activity tasks. This document can therefore be used as a reference model to support process assessment as specified in ISO/IEC 33002:2015. Annex D describes model-based systems and software engineering (MBSSE) and the relationships of software engineering, systems engineering, and digital engineering. Annex E presents the use of assurance claims in system assurance.

1.4 Limitations

This document does not prescribe a specific software life cycle model, development methodology, method, modelling approach, or technique.

This document does not establish a management system, but it is intended to be compatible with the quality management system provided by ISO 9001, the service management system provided by ISO/IEC 20000 series, the IT asset management system provided by the ISO/IEC 19770 series, and the information security management system provided by ISO/IEC 27000.

NOTE ISO/IEC/IEEE 90003 provides guidance for applying the requirements of ISO 9001 to software.

The users of this document are responsible for selecting a life cycle model for the organization or project and mapping the processes, activities, and tasks in this document into that model. The parties are also responsible for selecting and applying appropriate methodologies, methods, models, and techniques.

This document does not detail information items in terms of name, format, explicit content, and recording media. ISO/IEC/IEEE 15289 identifies the content for life cycle process information items (documentation).