Toward a common reference process model for SC7

ISO/IEC JTCI/SC7 is responsible for the development of standards for software engineering. To define the processes of the software life cycle, SC7 developed ISO/IEC 12207, Software Life Cycle Processes. Continued work on other standards and technical reports, however, has suggested that the scope and level of description in 12207 does not support all of the needs of SC7. Some projects have proposed additional processes. Others have described processes at a higher level of abstraction or have organized the processes differently. Another project will offer processes for the system life cycle. To halt the trend toward divergence, an ad hoc group of interested SC7 participants has offered a reference model. The model is intended to unify the existing base of SC7 documents by offering a common set of reference process and a set of operations for constructing the processes of the various documents. The model is also designed with an eye toward extensibility in the hope that it might also fill the future needs of SC7.