7 Part 7: V-Modell Reference Mapping to Standards

7.2 Mapping to other Standards

7.2.3 Mapping to ISO 15288

The international standard ISO/IEC 15288 "Life Cycle Management - System Life Cycle Processes" (in the following briefly called ISO 15288) in the version dated October 2002 provides a framework of processes that cover the whole life cycle of a system. Its objective and orientation is similar to that of the V-Modell. ISO 15288 uses the basic principles and terms from the standard ISO 12207; the descriptions are similar and differ only in detail.

Compared to the V-Modell, the descriptions of the activities are much less detailed. It is limited mainly to a listing of the activities without examining how to proceed during the individual activities. ISO 15288 also does not know any products, as the V-Modell does, but limits itself to providing so-called "Outcomes" that are the expected results of the processes. For these "Outcomes" neither explicitly required contents nor any designations and formats are specified. The standard further contains no role concept, no references concerning decision gates and project execution strategies and also no support as regards the methods to be used.

As a result, ISO 15288 is not suitable for the direct use in an actual project, but it provides a framework that permits to classify national standards or to perform corresponding detailings or concretizations (including tailoring) of the processes/activities and "Outcomes" in order to arrive at a process model that can be used in practice.

ISO 15288 may be used in the following areas:

• It covers the entire life cycle of a system, including concept, development, production, service use, updating, maintenance and deactivation of systems; the specified processes may be used for a system and its elements iteratively, recursively or competitively.
• It describes all processes required for the life cycle of a system. In this context it does not matter what the objective, the field of application, the complexity, the size or the degree of innovation of the system is. It also does not play a role whether the system is produced as a one-of-a-kind-item, in mass production or by way of adaptation.
• It may be used by organizations both in their role as acquirer and as supplier. Acquirers and suppliers may belong to the same or to different organizations, and the acquirer-supplier-relationship may extend from an informal arrangement to a formal contract.
• It may be used as a basis for the establishment, evaluation and improvement of an organizational business and process model.

In all ISO 15288 (cf. Figure 1) contains 25 processes that form the following four process groups:

• Agreement Processes,
• Enterprise Processes,
• Project Processes and
• Technical Processes.

Figure 1: Process Groups of the ISO/IEC 15288 Standard

Each of these processes is described by

• a Name used for identification,
• a Purpose that describes the global objective of the process at a relatively high level,
• a list of so-called Outcomes that indicate what results are expected in case of a successful execution of the process, and
• a list of Activities that are used for the structural decomposition of the process and that have to be carried out during the application of the process.

An initial mapping of the V-Modell on ISO 15288 at process group level yields the following allocation, in which one process group of ISO 15288 is covered by several »Disciplines of the V-Modell:

Process Group of ISO 15288 (Figure 1) Disciplines of the V-Modell

Agreement Processes: »Aquisition and Contracting, »Supply and Contracting

Enterprise Processes: »Process Improvement

Project Processes: »Planning and Control , »Reporting, » Configuration and Change Management

Technical Processes: »Evaluation , »Requirements and Analyses, » System Specifications,

»System Design, » Logistic Conception, »System Elements, » Logistic Elements

In the following, more detailed mapping of the V-Modell on ISO 15288 the description is also based on the process group structure of ISO 15288. Within a process group each ISO 15288 process is assigned the V-Modell activities - possibly also the process modules or disciplines - that cover this process. In this context "assignment" does not mean equivalence with regard to contents, since the contents of ISO processes and V-Modell activities are distributed differently in the two development standards, but coverage with regard to contents.

For the sake of clarity no V-Modell products (or topics) are shown in the figure. These may be determined simply by way of the V-Modell activities listed.