Software Life Cycle Processes Research Articles

Defining stakeholder relationships

Jointly developed by the ISO and IEC in 1995, the ISO/IEC 12207 standard, Software Life Cycle Processes, provides specific guidance in defining the roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders in the life cycle of a software project, product, or service. And the software community is beginning to take heed. The standard itself is relatively brief, detailing 17 processes in less than 40 pages. The 17 processes are divided into three main process groups: primary processes include acquisition, supply, development, operation, and maintenance; supporting processes include documentation, configuration management, quality assurance, verification, validation, joint review, audit, and problem resolution; organizational processes include management, infrastructure, improvement, and training. Each process breaks down into relevant activities and tasks that reflect a clear plan-do-check-act cycle. One further process, tailoring, specifies the activities and tasks to follow in adapting the standard to a particular situation or application. But just how useful is this standard? Based upon personal mentoring experiences, the author describes two case studies that demonstrate the standard's importance and versatility: Haldex Traction AB of Landskrona, Sweden, the supplier of a safety-critical automotive component; and Cambiot Healthcare Systems AB of Linkoping, Sweden, the supplier of a medical information system for hospitals and clinics. In these two cases, ISO/IEC 12207 has provided important value-added guidance in both systems and software engineering.

Quality evaluation of software development process based on spiral modeling

Various activities associated with software development are now being standardized in the software life cycle process (SLCP) which is under review at ISO. In developing telecommunications software by taking a conventional approach to software development, the structured design technique based on the waterfall model has so far been used in a software development process which is one of the elements composing SLCP. It is pointed out, however, that this conventional design technique has limitations with respect to the transference of technology and quality evaluation. On the other hand, new techniques of software development, such as object-oriented programming, prototyping, and spiral modeling are being introduced into computer software development. These new development techniques are expected to provide a solution to the transference of technology and other problems related to software development. In practice, however, introduction of these techniques to the development of telecommunications software is delayed because the scale of development is relatively large, a high level of real-time performance is sought, memory capacity is limited, and other reasons. With the emergence of a general-purpose telecommunications operating system (OS), upgrading of development environments, and decreasing cost of memory in recent years, it is now becoming possible to introduce these new techniques into the field of computer software development. Against this background, we applied a new development approach based on spiral modeling to the development of telecommunications software and compared it with the conventional development approach with respect to the productivity of software development, the qualify of software programs, and other factors. Although the man-hour control and some other technical problems were left unsolved in experimenting with this new development approach based on spiral modeling, we were able to obtain overall good results regarding productivity and the quality of software. © 1998 Scripta Technica, Electron Comm Jpn Pt 1, 81(12): 55–64, 1998

Report on Development of ISO Standard 15288 System Life Cycle Processes

ABSTRACTSince the late 1980s there has been a focused effort to produce standards, guides, and models that will enhance the development of systems. With the deemphasis of military standards within the US Department of Defense, these efforts by US and international standard bodies have been further stimulated.In 1994 the US published interim standard EIA/IS 632, Systems Engineering, and IEEE 1220 Trial‐Use Standard, Application and Management of the Systems Engineering Process. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has also been creating a series of standards and guides. ISO/IEC 12207, Software Life Cycle Processes, is one such standard published in 1995. Additional ISO guides and national implementations standards pertaining to 12207 are under preparation. Also in 1995, the same ISO working group that developed 12207 has undertaken the development of a system standard to be known as 15288, System Life Cycle Processes. And in 1996, the United Kingdom Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) prepared a draft guide with a system model that provides an excellent framework for engineering a system.This paper puts these and other efforts into perspective. The focus is on the 15288 development.

Dynamic Simulation Modeling of an Inspection-Based Software Lifecycle Process

A dynamic simulation model of an inspection-based software lifecycle process has been developed to support quantitative process evaluation. It can be used in project planning and management, and aid in process improvement. The model serves to examine the effects of inspection practices on cost, schedule, and quality throughout the lifecycle. It uses system dynamics to model the interrelated flows of tasks, errors, and personnel throughout different development phases and is calibrated to industrial data. It demonstrates the effects of performing inspections and other managerial policies. The dynamic effects are tracked throughout the time history of a project to show resource usage, task completions and defect trends per phase. Cumulative metrics and development tradeoffs for decision making are also presented. Several types of validation tests are performed against industrial data, existing theory and other prediction models. The results indicate a valid model that can be used for process evaluation and project planning, and serve as a framework for incorporating other dynamic process factors.

Primary flight computers for the Boeing 777

This paper follows one on the Boeing 777 primary flight computers, which was presented at ERA's 1992 Avionics Conference. The current paper focuses on the system requirements software implementation, and operational consequences of a fault-tolerant system. Beginning with the reasons for fly-by-wire, the paper goes on to describe the overall architecture of the Boeing 777 primary flight computer system. Particular emphasis is placed on the control modes and the way in which envelope protection functions are implemented. After a brief description of the hardware, the paper describes the software life-cycle process, including design, coding and test, highlighting the way in which the integrity of the software has been achieved. The fault-tolerant aspects of the design, and the advantages that these provide to operators, conclude the paper

ISO 12207 Software life cycle processes ? fit for purpose?

The recently published ISO 12207 Software Life Cycle Processes is examined for adequacy using the model of IT standards developed by Cargill. An overview description is used to identify two principal features of ISO 12207 that militate against its applicability as a reference standard for the software industry — the way in which processes can be tailored to fit any desired process model, and its multiplicity of quality assurance processes. This overview description uncovers the breadth of guidelines proposed to accompany ISO 12207 in future years, and finds that the new standard is well described by Cargill's criteria as an industry standard model with potential extensions-via the guidelines-into functional profiles that will give descriptions about how to achieve the potential of the industry model. Having established the status of ISO 12207 as a software industry standard within the general scope of ISO 9001, its position with respect to ISO 9000-3 is appraised. Observing Cargill's result that there may be more than one industry model for any specific generic standard, an attempt is made to map the way forward for the co-existence of ISO 12207 and ISO 9000-3. The SPICE project becomes vital, not only as a standard in its own right but also as a link between tailorability in ISO 12207 and the setting of minimum competencies for compliance with ISO 9001 using the process descriptions of ISO 12207. The declared revision aim of ISO 9001 for the end of the century, to reduce proliferation of standards, is found to be compatible with the prospect of a variety of ISO 12207 pathways to compliance for the software sector and its special problem of defining a lifecycle.

International Standard ISO/IEC 12207 Software Life Cycle Processes

In June 1989, the JTC1 initiated the development of an International Standard, ISO/IEC 12207 [1], on software life cycle processes to fill a critical need. Since the cottage industry era of the late 1970's, software has been establishing itself as an integral part of many scientific and business disciplines. However, environments for developing and managing software have been proliferating for lack of a uniform framework for managing and engineering software. The International Standard fills that critical need by establishing a common framework that can be used by software practitioners to manage and engineer software. Besides, such a uniform framework would promote international trade in software products and services.

Cost models for future software life cycle processes: COCOMO 2.0

Current software cost estimation models, such as the 1981 Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO) for software cost estimation and its 1987 Ada COCOMO update, have been experiencing increasing difficulties in estimating the costs of software developed to new life cycle processes and capabilities. These include non-sequential and rapid-development process models; reuse-driven approaches involving commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) packages, re-engineering, applications composition, and applications generation capabilities; object-oriented approaches supported by distributed middleware; and software process maturity initiatives. This paper summarizes research in deriving a baseline COCOMO 2.0 model tailored to these new forms of software development, including rationale for the model decisions. The major new modeling capabilities of COCOMO 2.0 are a tailorable family of software sizing models, involving Object Points, Function Points, and Source Lines of Code; nonlinear models for software reuse and re-engineering; an exponentdriver approach for modeling relative software diseconomies of scale; and several additions, deletions and updates to previous COCOMO effort-multiplier cost drivers. This model is serving as a framework for an extensive current data collection and analysis effort to further refine and calibrate the model's estimation capabilities.

The Software Life Cycle Processes standard

A new standard, Software Life Cycle Processes (ISO/IEC 12207), developed over the past six years, has recently been approved by JTC1 (Joint Technical Committee 1 of the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission). While software has been established as an integral part of scientific and business disciplines, environments for developing and managing software have proliferated without a common, uniform framework for the software life cycle. This standard provides such a framework, so that software practitioners can speak the same language when they create and manage software. Practitioners can use the framework to acquire, supply, develop, operate, and maintain software.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Emerging technologies that support a software process life cycle

The goal of developing quality software can be achieved by focusing on the improvement of both product quality and process quality. While the traditional focus has been on product quality, there is an increased awareness of the benefits of improving the quality of the processes used to develop and support those products. These processes are key elements in understanding and improving the practice of software engineering. In this paper, existing objectives for the development and application of models of software processes are restated, and current research sponsored by the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) is discussed as it applies to furthering each of the objectives. A framework is also presented that relates the research work to the various sectors of a software process life cycle. The on-going research involves four universities, CAS, and collaboration with IBM Toronto Laboratory developers.

A model for the protection of reusable software

In applied efforts to reduce the cost of the software life-cycle process, government agencies and industry are focusing on the reusability of software. Software reusability, both between various automated information systems and software projects, has become a primary requirement in many requests for proposals. Software reusability is, perhaps, one of the most significant low technology, cost-cutting methods available to the data processing community today. Without effective protective measures established and in place, however, reusing software can result in the proliferation of malicious code, resulting in the loss of dollars, possibly even lives. An effective protection plan for reusable software must combine verification of the software by the developer, appropriate protection of the software during both storage and use, guaranteed delivery and integrity when software is transferred, and re-verification of software by the new user prior to incorporation in a new design. NASA's approach to software protection establishes four hierarchical levels of automated information sensitivity and criticality and provides guidance for appropriate protective measures for each level. We advocate the addition of protection domains to the current NASA schema.

Acquiring experiences with the modelling and implementation of the project life-cycle process: the PMDB work

Formalising and automating the software life-cycle processes are key factors in the improvement of software productivity. This paper describes the Project Master Database (PMDB) work, three generations of investigations into the modelling and encoding of software life-cycle processes; it briefly describes past activities and concentrates on more recent investigations. It presents an approach to software process modelling based on an object-based model called the PMDB+ model, which includes project elements, relationships between those elements and behavioural descriptions of project life-cycle activities. An overview of the model is presented, together with examples to illustrate the application of the model to existing software processes. It also describes a prototyping exercise that implemented the PMDB+ model in an object-oriented database management system. Key results of these investigations, the impact of process implementations on the architecture of environments, and lessons learnt from the exercises are described.

Using an Issue-Based Hypertext System to Capture the Software Life-Cycle Process

Hypertext and object-oriented database technology offer significant possibilities for designing new software engineering environments which better represent the complex relationships between the ma...

Standard for the software life-cycle process

No abstract available.