Systems Engineering Standards

The International Council on Systems Engineering Standards Initiatives group is one of the most active communities within INCOSE. Its members are working to advance and harmonize systems engineering standards used worldwide. INCOSE liaises with existing standards developing organizations, contributing to the development of standards and technical reports and participating in the planning for new work items related to systems engineering standards. Questions? Send an email to standards-development@incose.net for more information.

Current Systems Engineering Standards

ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288: 2023 – Systems and software engineering -- System Life Cycle Processes

Available for purchase from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). See ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288:2023 - Systems and software engineering — System life cycle processes for a description.

IEEE 15288.1-2014 – IEEE Standard for Application of Systems Engineering on Defense Programs

Available for purchase from Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). See https://standards.ieee.org/ieee/15288.1/5704/ for a description.

IEEE 15288.2-2014 – IEEE Standard for Technical Reviews and Audits of Defense Programs

Available for purchase from Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). See https://standards.ieee.org/ieee/15288.2/5705/ for a description.

ISO/IEC/IEEE 15289:2019 - Content of systems and software life cycle information products

The 4th edition of this standard was published to align with the updated version of ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288, System and software engineering—system life cycle processes. See ISO/IEC/IEEE 15289:2019 - Systems and software engineering — Content of life-cycle information items (documentation)

ISO/IEC TR 24748-1:2018 – Guide for Life Cycle Management

Available for free from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). See ISO/IEC/IEEE 24748-1:2018 - Systems and software engineering — Life cycle management — Part 1: Guidelines for life cycle management

ISO/IEC TR 24748-3:2020 – Guide for Application of 12207

Available for purchase from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). See ISO/IEC/IEEE 24748-3:2020 - Systems and software engineering — Life cycle management — Part 3: Guidelines for the application of ISO/IEC/IEEE 12207 (software life cycle processes) for a description.

ISO/IEC 15504: 2004 - Information Technology - Process Assessment

JTC1/SC7/WG10
Available for purchase from the International Organization for Standardization

ISO/IEC 15504-1:2004 Information technology — Process assessment — Part 1: Concepts and vocabulary

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=38932

ISO/IEC 15504-2:2003 Information technology — Process assessment — Part 2: Performing an assessment

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=37458

ISO/IEC 15504-2:2003/Cor 1:2004

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=40192

ISO/IEC 15504-3:2004 Information technology — Process assessment — Part 3: Guidance on performing an assessment

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=37454

ISO/IEC 15504-4:2004 Information technology — Process assessment — Part 4: Guidance on use for process improvement and process capability determination

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=37462

ISO/IEC 15504-5:2012 Information technology — Process Assessment — Part 5: An exemplar Process Assessment Model

http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_ics/catalogue_detail_ics.htm?csnumber=60555

ISO/IEC TR 15504-6:2013 Information technology — Process assessment — Part 6: An exemplar system life cycle process assessment model

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=61492

ISO/IEC TR 15504-7:2008 Information technology — Process assessment — Part 7: Assessment of organizational maturity

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=50519

ISO/IEC PDTR 15504-8 Information technology — Process assessment — Part 8: An exemplar process assessment model for IT service management

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=50625

ISO/IEC TS 15504-9:2011 Information technology — Process assessment — Part 9: Target process profiles

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=51684

ISO/IEC TS 15504-10:2011 Information technology — Process assessment — Part 10: Safety extension

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=54537

ISO/IEC 29110 (multi-part)

See http://profs.etsmtl.ca/claporte/English/VSE/index.html

ISO/PAS 19450:2015(en) - Automation systems and integration — Object-Process Methodology (OPM)

ISO TC184/SC5/WG1
Available for purchase from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) athttps://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:pas:19450:ed-1:v1:en

ISO 10303-AP233, Industrial automation systems and integration -- Part 233: Systems engineering data representation

TC184/SC4/WG3/T8 (http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=55257)

ANSI/GEIA EIA-632, Processes for Engineering a System, 01 Sept 2003

Available for purchase from Techstreet.

Under revision by GEIA G-47 to align with ISO/IEC 15288; early stage of development (current status unknown). After publication will be fast tracked as an ISO standard.

EIA/IS 731.1, Systems Engineering Capability Model, Electronic Industries Alliance (Interim Standard), 01 Aug 2002

Available for purchase from Techstreet

IEEE 1220-2005, IEEE Standard for Application and Management of the Systems Engineering Process, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 09 Sept 2005

Available for purchase from Techstreet. See http://standards.ieee.org/reading/ieee/std_public/new_desc/se/1220-2005.html for a description and table of contents.

Revision from 1998 version to align IEEE 1220 with ISO/IEC 15288 and to provide a lower level of detail than 15288. In process of being fast-tracked to become an ISO Technical Report.

Other Systems Engineering Standards

ANSI/AIAA G-043-1992, Guide for the Preparation of Operational Concept Documents

Being upgraded now by INCOSE and AIAA partnership.

IEEE 1471, 2000: IEEE Recommended Practice for Architectural Description of Software-Intensive Systems

Available for purchase from IEEE.

Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)

All you need to know is available from the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute's CMMI website at http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/

Merger of SW-CMM (from SEI) and SECM (EIA/IS 731)

Released in July 2000 (Combined SE/SW model)

Later release with IPPD elements (version 1.1), Jan 2002

Unified Modeling Language (UML)

Available for download from the Object Management Group (OMG) at http://www.omg.org/spec/UML/2.3/.

An older version was approved as an ISO standard: ISO/IEC 19501:2005 Information technology - Open Distributed Processing - Unified Modeling Language (UML) Version 1.4.2 As of March 2011, there is a final draft international standard ISO/IEC 19505, comprising OMG Unified Modeling Language (OMG UML) Version 2.1.2 -- Part 1: Infrastructure and Part 2: Superstructure

For additional information, refer to http://www.omg.org/spec/UML/index.htm.

OMG Systems Modeling Language (OMG SysML™)

The OMG released SysML Version 1.2 as a formal specification in June 2010.

Latest information is available at the official OMG SysML site at http://www.omgsysml.org

UML Profile for DoDAF/MODAF (UPDM)

Unknown beta draft version was released in November 2010.

Useful Websites

ISO has established an Online Browser Platform (OBP), which supports viewing (no printing or saving) of the informative clauses in many standards. Normative text is not available, but this provides a preview of the introduction, scope, and other normative text that might be useful for determining the usefulness of a particular standard. The committee search page for the Online Browser Platform is at https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#search. The main page is https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/.

ISO has made a number of standards “free available”, that is, free-of-charge. Many of these standards and technical reports provide frameworks and foundations for other standards projects, so are useful during the development process, but in other cases, ISO has agreed to requests by standards committees to make certain standards available without any cost recovery. See http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html.

Some information on standards projects in ISO/IEC JTC 1 Subcommittee 7, Systems and Software Engineering, is available at http://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink?func=ll&objId=8914042&objAction=browse&sort=name. Much of the site is password protected, but the meetings and resolutions page provides reports presented at Plenary (generally in the spring) and Interim (generally in autumn) meetings.

INCOSE participates in ISO/IEC JTC1 Subcommittee 27, IT Security Techniques, through the US Technical Advisory Group to SC27. This gave INCOSE an opportunity to participate without waiting for approval of official status as a Category A Liaison. Additional information is available at http://www.din.de/en/meta/jtc1sc27. Development of positions is led by the INCOSE Systems Security Engineering WG.

ISO TC 292 recently established a public web site on security and resilience at http://www.isotc292online.org/ . There are descriptions of the many standards projects related to the topics.