Page 212 - SOFTWARE TESTING & QUALITY ASSURANCE

Unit 14: Maturity Model and Quality Standards

There is an increasing trend among associations to discard local standards and follow international
standards. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the associated IEEE
Computer Society are among some of the organizations who are leading this trend.
One of IEEE’s prime contributions lies in the creation and promotion of standardization. A subgroup of
the IEEE standards operational group was started in 1976 to introduce and promote SQA standards,
which was later published as the IEEE Software Engineering Standard Collection (in frequently
updated editions). Standards, among which most of them can be classified as project process standards,
turn out to be a key source for international standards.
The intentions of IEEE/EIA Std 12207, as resolute by the IEEE and EIA, can thus be stated as:
1. To set up an international standard model of universal software life cycle processes that can be
recognized by the software industries across the world.
2. To develop understanding among business groups by application of universally recognized
processes, activities and tasks.
The SPICE (Software Process Improvement for Capability Determination) project and the ISO/IEC
15504 software process assessment standard are combined initiatives taken by ISO and IEC The SPICE
(Software Process Improvement for Capability Determination) Project was introduced in 1993 to gain
control over this problem by establishing a standard software process assessment methodology.
SPICE is a universal proposal for maintaining the improvement of international standards for Software
Process Assessment. There are three prime objectives related to these:
1. To set up a working frame as a standard for software process assessment.
2. To perform organizational assessments for the up-and-coming standards.
3. To support the technology transfer of software process assessment into the software industries
across the world.

At present, the spice standards are the guidelines and the prime target of any software project being
carried out. The ISO/IEC 15504 consists of 29 processes that the organization has to execute effectively
to attain capability level 5 of CMM.

The processes are grouped into five subject areas. This is shown in table 14.2.

Table 14.2 Grouping Based on Subject Areas

Subject area No. of processes
Customer–supplier (CUS) 5
Engineering (ENG) 7
Support (SUP) 8
Management (MAN) 4
Organization (ORG) 5

The umbrella standard ISO/IEC 12207A that is also called as software lifecycle process standard is
among the most extensively used standards. Moreover, it is a standard for every customer and process
in the SESC collection.
The international standard sets up a universal framework for software all through its life cycle starting
from the beginning throughout its journey, and it attends the organizational framework of those
software processes both from the system’s technical point of view and from the enterprise’s business
point of view.
The standard is broadly considered as a base for world trade in software services. The standard is
already implemented by almost all the major countries of the world or is underway for the rest of them.

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