Standard-compliant development with ISO 29110 - even for the little ones

Anyone who deals with systems engineering will come across ISO 15288 System Development - The System Life Cycle and its Processes". Incidentally, the INCOSE SE manual provides good access to the standard. The ISO 29110 standard was created as a "slimmed-down" version of ISO 15288 to make it easier for small companies in particular to get started.

ISO 15288, the big brother

ISO 15288 is very comprehensive, and small companies in particular are asking themselves: Is the cost-benefit ratio right? Is the standard not oversized for our needs? And: What will I have to deal with and who will help if things get stuck? These aspects were examined in the (free) study Systems engineering in industrial practice which the following survey results from the study show:

ISO 29110 was created to at least partially eliminate these reservations. For one thing, many parts of the standard are free of charge. The problem is not so much that small companies cannot afford a standard; but it is another hurdle, as employees are forced to deal with bosses and purchasing again just to get access to a standard.

Secondly, the standard has a modular structure, which makes it possible to start small and build up step by step. A user then only needs to deal with the relevant parts of the standard. I think the idea is great, but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired: the standard consists of five parts, some of which have been broken down further, resulting in identifiers such as 29110-5-6-2. The overview visualizes this (29110-1, Figure 1), but I find the presentation more confusing than helpful (the same applies to the text). Hence my pragmatic advice:

To get started, I recommend Systems Engineers, with ISO 29110-5-6-2 and perhaps in the Overview of ISO 29110-1, but ignore everything else, at least at the beginning.

Start with this profile

In principle, the profile is nothing more than a compact process description. At the top level, this consists of two Processesproject management (PM) and development (SR, System Definition and Realization).

Each of these processes is then broken down into further Activities which in turn are broken down from Activities (tasks) exist. An activity is defined by a Role carried out, requires Inputs and produces Expenditure.

That is the essence of the profile. This information is primarily presented in tabular form. The following is a non-trivial example from development, Task SR4.2, The implementation of a hardware element:

The left-hand column shows the Role the developer (DEV - Developer). Then comes the actual description of the Activitybuild or improve a hardware system element. A number of artifacts are required as input, in particular the specification. And the Result is the system element, as well as accompanying information for the element.

This should be enough for today, but as you can imagine, there is a lot more to say about ISO 29110. More on this in a future article.