Defense

• Defense acquisition is based on two key documents, DODD 5000.1 and DODI 5000.2.
  • More generally, most Dept of Defense Directives (DODD) can be found here.
• The Defense Acquisition Guidebook provides links to most policies and standards.
• Many military (MIL-) and defense (DOD-) standards can be obtained from the Defense Standardization Program (DSP).

Defense software-related resources include:

• The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) developed the CMM and CMMI, and has done lots of research on software process and management issues. (Link goes to index of SEI publications.)
• The Software Technology Support Center (STSC) leads the Air Force in software engineering.

Non-Defense

• You have to register for it, but the Acquisition Streamlining and Standardization Information System (ASSIST) allows downloading most government standards.
• ISO 12207 is the international standard for life cycle description. Here is a summary of its structure.
• Analysis of the relationship among major life cycle and process/quality standards.
• The NIST Software Quality Group has many publications on testing, QA, formal specification, measurement, process improvement, etc.
• Avionics (aircraft electronics) tend to need to follow the standard RTCA DO-178B.
• Does anybody REALLY know what time it is? Yes.
• Lots of miscellaneous information about every branch of government can be found in the U.S. Government Manual.
• For links to public law (PL) and United States Code (USC), see here.

• Can purchase almost any industry, national, international, or other publicly published standard from IHS/Global. Expensive, but lots of choices.
• If you get confused trying to read the names of standards, here's what they mean.
• The international standards source is ISO. The name ISO is from the Greek prefix for 'one', not an acronym (after all, the acronym would change in each of ISO's six official languages).
• In the USA, ANSI is the national standards body.
• Drexel students can download ISO 12207 and IEEE standards for FREE from the IEEE links described here.
• A summary of many DoD and industry standards related to system development and statistics is provided here.

Meanwhile, here are some other freebies.

• EIA-731, for assessing systems engineering capability. Goes with ISO 632, which isn't available for free.
• MIL-STD-498, which was the software development life cycle guide between DOD-STD-2167a and ISO 12207.
• Air Force method for evaluating software development capability, similar in concept to CMM assessment. (Part 1 and Part 2)
• I have a ton of old military standards, but there isn't enough room to post them all here.