Software Process Improvement Laboratory

The SPI-LAB is actively involved in the creation of local and international standards in the field of software and systems engineering, and IT service management since. The SPI-LAB CEO is presently chairperson of the South African Bureau of Standards committee for ICT Software and Systems Engineering (SABS SC71C). This committee held its first meeting was held in February 1997.

About ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7 (the International ISO Committee for Software and Systems Engineering).

The Mission of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7 is to facilitate world trade and promote consumer confidence in the products, services and technologies of software engineering by providing international standards that reflect best practice, protect the public from adverse effects, and meet the needs of the world-wide community of software clients, practitioners, educators and suppliers.

How are national and international standards developed?

The development of a standard following a well-defined path through a number of stages of formalisation:

• New work item proposal (NWI)
• Working draft (WD)
• Committee draft (CD) or Preliminary Draft Technical Report (PDTR)
• Draft International Standard (DIS) or Draft Technical Report (DTR)
• Publication stage as International Standard (IS) or Technical Report (TR)

The major difference between an IS and a TR is the update cycle, being 5 years for an IS and 2 years for a TR. They are equally authoritative.

At each stage of document processing, technical experts in each country are consulted to obtain their views and to achieve consensus on the emerging Standard. The process is formal, recorded and documented at the national and international levels.

How is a standard reviewed?:

• A 'Call for Review' for the Standard in question is issued to the identified community of interest, identifying the review criteria and the key dates for the return of comment and meeting for the disposition of local comment.
• The Workgroup Convener assembles the returned comment before the meeting into a comment and disposition register and sorts the comments into the categories of: architectural, technical high, technical low, and editorial.
• At the review meeting the comments are addressed, and a disposition recorded. The output of the meeting is a set of comments representing (in this instance) the South African national position regarding the further development of the Standard. These comments are returned to the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC7 secretary who forwards them to the editor of the Standard.
• The South African Workgroup convener will attend the next international meeting of the SC7 WG for the resolution of comments returned by participating National Standards Bodies and to defend the South African National Body position.
• The editor of the Standard then updates/corrects the document which is forwarded to the SC7 Secretary for distribution to National Standards Bodies. The Standard is also advanced to the next stage of processing e.g. from CD to DIS.
• The document is issued in each country for comment by local technical experts.
• This process is continued until all DIS comments have been resolved and the document is sent to ISO for publication.
• Typically this process can take from 3 - 5 years from the initial proposal for a new Work Item to final publication of the Standard (or Technical Report).