international standard isoiec 12207 software life cycle.pdf

INTERNATIONAL STANDARD ISO/IEC 12207 SOFTWARE LIFE CYCLE PROCESSES Raghu Singh Federal Aviation Administration Washington, DC, USA BACKGROUND In 1987 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) established a Joint Technical Committee (JTC1) on Information Technology. The scope of the JTC1 is Standardization in the field of information technology systems (including microprocessor systems) and equipments. 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 1970s, 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. The International Standard was published August 1, 1995. The following countries participated in the development of the standard: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Den