The Evolution of the ISO/IEC 29110 set of standards and guides

While the quality of products is a competitive advantage for very small software development organizations, the usage of Software and Systems Engineering standards amongst such very small organizations is extremely low. A key factor in the literature explaining this lack of quality standards adoption is the perception by small and very small organizations that such standards have been developed for large multi-national companies and not with small and very small organizations in mind. The ISO/IEC 29110 standard is unique amongst software and systems engineering standards, in that the working group (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7 WG 24) mandated to develop a new standard approached industry to conduct a needs assessment and gather actual requirements for a new standard as part of the standards development process. This paper presents a historical perspective behind the development of the ISO/IEC 29110 systems and software engineering standard and its constituent components, including the rationale behind its development and the innovative design of implementation guides to assist very small companies in adopting the standards. Further this paper will present an overview of the various parts of the ISO/IEC 29110 family and briefly present the plans for the future evolution of this series of standards

ISO-Standardized Requirements Activities for Very Small Entities

International audienceThe use of Software Engineering standards may promote recognized and valuable engineering practices for Very Small Entities (VSEs) but these standards do not fit the needs of VSEs. The ISO/IEC Working Group 24 (WG24) is developing the ISO/IEC 29110 standard Lifecycle profiles for Very Small Entities; this standard is due for approval in June 2010. A pilot project about ISO 29110 use has been established between our Software Engineering group and a 14-person company building and selling counting systems about the frequentation levels of public and private sites. The pilot project aims to help VSEs deliver the Software Requirements Specification, Test Cases and Test Procedures for a new web-based system intended to manage fleets of counting systems. As the project goes along, it appears that the 29110 set of documents was not up to the task of sustaining this VSE in its engineering activities. We supported the VSE in two ways: (i) a Training Session based on the 29110 Requirements Analysis activity, and (ii) Self-Training Packages - a set of resources intended to develop experience and skills in Requirements Identification and SW Requirement Specification (SRS). Our inspiration stems from the 15504-5 standard with a desire to provide software engineers with an exemplar set of base practices providing a definition of the tasks and activities needed to fulfil the process (e.g. requirements) outcomes. Task definition is collected on a task card. The results of this pilot study provide the VSE with a roadmap through the Requirements activity, which is compatible with the ISO/IEC 29110 standard

Combining economic and social goals in the design of production systems by using ergonomics standards

In designing of production systems, economic and social goals can be combined, if ergonomics is integrated into the design process. More than 50 years of ergonomics research and practice have resulted in a large number of ergonomics standards for designing physical and organizational work environments. This paper gives an overview of the 174 international ISO and European CEN standards in this field, and discusses their applicability in design processes. The available standards include general recommendations for integrating ergonomics into the design process, as well as specific requirements for manual handling, mental load, task design, human-computer-interaction, noise, heat, body measurements, and other topics. The standards can be used in different phases of the design process: allocation of system functions between humans and machines, design of the work organization, work tasks and jobs, design of work environment, design of work equipment, hardware and software, and design of workspace and workstation. The paper is meant to inform engineers and managers involved in the design of production systems about the existence of a large number of ISO and CEN standards on ergonomics, which can be used to optimize human well-being and overall system performance.review;standard;standardization;ergonomics;CEN;ISO;human factors;production engineering;production planning

Developing software and systems engineering standards

There are a great many Software and Systems Engineering standards such as those supported by organizations like the ISO (International Organization for Standardization). It is often said that many of these have a poor reputation with many sections of academia and industry. Whilst there may be many publicized business advantages of using standards, standardization is an often-neglected route for exploiting academic and commercial research. Often researchers have little experience of standardization to plan, implement and exploit their research utilizing standards. Involvement with standards development organizations in your research can positively increase international recognition and highlight in a world stage your research and enhance your international reputation. This keynote address examined the benefits of being directly involved in the standards community for both industry and academia and specifically how standards can inform your research. Based upon personal experience as Ireland Head of Delegation to ISO's Software and Systems Engineering group and that of being an ISO standards editor, this keynote will examine the issues and benefits of becoming actively involved inside the standardization community and how this can be translated into your personal research agenda

The Object Management Group Ontology Definition Metamodel

Report of a submission being made to a major international software engineering standards group, the Object Management Group which ties together OMG standards with World-Wide Web Consortium and International Standards Organization standards. Major industry bodies including IBM are collaborating, and the submission has the support of 24 companies. OMG, W3C and ISO standards strongly influence the industry, especially in combination. Colomb was a major contributor, responsible for 30% of the submission, and the primary author of the paper

On project management process in agile systems development methodologies and the ISO/IEC 29110 standard (entry profile)

The use of ISO/IEC systems and software engineering standards is recommended for software development organizations. In particular, in 2011, a new software process standard was released for Very Small Entities (VSEs): ISO/IEC 29110. Furthermore, the Agile-based System Development Methodologies (SCRUM, XP, Crystal, among others) have also gained interest by organizations. In this - in progress- research, we present an overview of the ISO/IEC 29110 standard, as well as of the Agile-based SDMs, and propose that such SDMs can be enhanced with recommendations from the ISO/IEC standard. In particular, we focus on the Project Management process – one of the two essential processes in the ISO/IEC 29110 standard – and its potential support through a Deployment Package (DP). A DP can be considered an electronic process guideline, and it is attempted to facilitate the implementation of the standard in a VSE

SQuAP-Ont: an ontology of software quality relational factors from financial systems

Quality, architecture, and process are considered the keystones of software engineering. ISO defines them in three separate standards. However, their interaction has been scarcely studied, so far. The SQuAP model (Software Quality, Architecture, Process) describes twenty-eight main factors that impact on software quality in banking systems, and each factor is described as a relation among some characteristics from the three ISO standards. Hence, SQuAP makes such relations emerge rigorously, although informally. In this paper, we present SQuAP-Ont, an OWL ontology designed by following a well established methodology based on the re-use of Ontology Design Patterns (i.e. ODPs). SQuAP-Ont formalises the relations emerging from SQuAP in order to represent and reason via Linked Data about software engineering in a three-dimensional model consisting of quality, architecture, and process ISO characteristics

A Guideline Tool for Ongoing Product Evaluation in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

As consumer demand for user friendly software increases, usability evaluation is crucial to develop software systems which are easy to learn and use. However, implementation of usability evaluation is challenging for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) due to factors such as lack of technical expertise, knowledge and experience of methods and standards. This results in neglect, or poorly executed evaluations of projects, resulting in software that disappoints and frustrates clients. To overcome this loss of competitiveness, we propose here a visual incorporation tool derived from ISO standards that would assist software development teams in SMEs in understanding and implementing usability evaluations. It shows fundamental Usability Engineering (UE) and Software Engineering (SE) activities and artifacts relevant to the usability evaluation and software development process, with potential incorporation points being highlighted. Dependencies and relationships are shown by links between activities and artifacts. Additionally, convergent artifacts of both disciplines were identified and shown. Evaluation of the proposed tool was based on the questionnaire results of software development practitioners from SMEs

Software project management with ISO/IEC 29110

The recently published ISO/IEC 29110 standard Lifecycle profiles for Very Small Entities has at its core a Management and Engineering Guide [1] which are targeted at very small entities (enterprises, organizations, departments or projects) having up to 25 people [2], to assist them unlock the potential benefits of using standards which are specifically designed to address their needs. This paper discusses the role and structure of Project Management in the emerging ISO/IEC 29110 standard Software Process Lifecycles for Very Small Entities as well as its practical implication. This paper will also focus on the design and development of project management support documentation and their associated usage in early trials of ISO/IEC 29110

Developments in Aerospace Software Engineering practices for VSEs: An overview of the process requirements and practicesof integrated Maturity models and Standards

As part of the evolution of the Space market in the last years – globally referred to as Space 2.0 - small companies are playing an increasingly relevant role in different aerospace projects. Business incubators established by European Space Agency (ESA) and similar entities are evidence of the need of moving initiatives to small companies characterized by greater flexibility to develop specific activities. Software is a key component in most aerospace projects, and the success of the initiatives and projects usually depends on the capability of developing reliable software following well-defined standards. But small entities face some difficulties when adopting software development standards that have been conceived thinking on larger organizations and big programs. The need of defining software development standards tailored to small companies and groups is a permanent subject of discussion not only in the aerospace field, and has led in recent years to the publication of the ISO/IEC 29110 series of systems and software engineering standards and guides, aimed to solve the issues that Very Small Entities (VSEs) () – settings having up to twenty-five people -, found with other standards like CMMI or SPICE. This paper discusses the tailoring defined by different aerospace organizations for VSEs in the aerospace industry, and presents a conceptual arrangement of the standard based on meta-modeling languages that allow the extension and full customization with the incorporation of specific software engineering requirements and practices from ECSS (European Cooperation for Space Standardization)