Engineering process standards: state of the art and challenges

In the last 20 years, software engineering standards have evolved from documenting processes in the military complex to supporting the total software life cycle. Standards that define software engineering processes are still progressing in terms of the breadth and depth of their coverage and the maturity of the standards themselves. In this regard, they are moving closer to standards in older engineering professions. The shift from many major producers to just a few has changed the industry. As we've moved to a global economy, vendors have put more faith in international standards as a means of selling their products. Reducing the number of major producers has made the remaining more powerful. In this article, we examine the state of the art of software engineering process standards and discuss challenges that the profession must address. Our focus is on all existing software process standards.