Software development process standards: challenges for process assurance

During 1992-94 the Cellular Infrastructure Group (CIG) organization of Motorola implemented a set of common software development process specifications using the IEEE Std 1074 as a process architecture guideline and the SEI Capability Maturity Model (CMM) for process requirements. In late 1993 the Software Quality Assurance group implemented a process assurance program of auditing against these process specifications for process compliance and process improvement. The IEEE Std 1028 was chosen as the basic standard for development of the audit program. In June 1996, the Cellular Infrastructure Group became ISO 9001 certified. This paper discusses challenges and lessons learned from working with these three major quality system and software development process standards from a process assurance perspective.