ISO STANDARDS FOR SOFTWARE

DOCUMENTATION
ISO standards
 ISO stands for International Organization
for Standardization
 Standards make an enormous and positive
contribution to most aspects of our lives.
 Standards ensure desirable characteristics
of products and services such as quality,
environmental friendliness, safety,
reliability, efficiency and interchangeability -
and at an economical cost
ISO standards – Why?
 make the development, manufacturing and
supply of products and services more
efficient, safer and cleaner
 facilitate trade between countries and make
it fairer
 provide governments with a technical base
for health, safety and environmental
legislation, and conformity assessment
ISO standards – Why?
 share technological advances and good
management practice
 disseminate innovation
 safeguard consumers, and users in general,
of products and services
 make life simpler by providing solutions to
common problems
Documentation standards in ISO
 To provide guidelines to standardize
development and assessment of technical
documentation for the software industry.
 Software sector has progressed. Standards
to improve and match.
 To improve level and quality of
documentation for variety of software
applications.
Scope of ISO 18019
 Comprehensive coverage of all activities in a
document development project
 Guidelines
 Needs analysis and requirements definition
 Analysis and design of requirements
 Development of the document
 Presentation of the document
Contents of ISO 18019
Features
 Checklists for various tasks in the process
 Practical recommendations
 Experience based suggestions on
presentation and layout
 Forms and design tips
Contents of ISO 18019
Important elements
 Forms of documentation : Electronic and
paper
 Defining objectives : Product definition,
product usability, sales objectives…
 Analysis and design : Audience analysis,
Business tasks performed
 Planning : Documentation plan, personnel,
costs, equipment, schedules, milestones…
Contents of ISO 18019
Important elements
 Development and review : Preparing and
issuing drafts, reviews, usability testing,
preparation of master documents, handing
over the finished documentation, archiving
and versioning
 Guidelines for the design of the
documentation : Overviews, description of
tasks, definitions, error messages,
navigation, colors, text, graphics…
Contents of ISO 18019
Existing standards
 IS9127 User documentation and cover
information for consumer software
packages.
 Details minimum information requirements that
should be visible on the outside of a shrink-
wrapped software package and that in the
enclosed documentation
Contents of ISO 18019
Existing standards
 ISO/IEC TR9294 Guidelines for the
management of software documentation
 Covers the interface between management and
documentation
 BS 7649:1993
 Guide to the design and preparation of
documentation for users of application software
Contents of ISO 18019
Existing standards
 IS15910 Software user documentation
process
 To define the process of documentation as a
part of the software development process
 BS 7830:1996
 Guide to the design and preparation of
documentation for users of application software