 iso/iec 15504 information technology &mdash; process assessment, also known as spice (software process improvement and capability determination), is a set of technical standards documents for the computer software development process and related business management functions. it is another joint international organization for standardization (iso) and international electrotechnical commission (iec) standard, which was developed by the iso and iec joint subcommittee, iso/iec jtc 1/sc 7. iso/iec 15504 initially was derived from process lifecycle standard iso/iec 12207 and from maturity models like bootstrap, trillium and the cmm. ==overview== iso/iec 15504 is the reference model for the maturity models (consisting of capability levels which in turn consist of the process attributes and further consist of generic practices) against which the assessors can place the evidence that they collect during their assessment, so that the assessors can give an overall determination of the organization's capabilities for delivering products (software, systems, and it services).iso/iec 15504-2 clause 5 ==history== a working group was formed in 1993 to draft the international standard and used the acronym spice. spice initially stood for "software process improvement and capability evaluation", but in consideration of french concerns over the meaning of "evaluation", spice has now been renamed "software process improvement and capability determination". spice is still used for the user group of the standard, and the title for the annual conference. the first spice was held in limerick, ireland in 2000, "spice 2003" was hosted by esa in the netherlands, "spice 2004" was hosted in portugal, "spice 2005" in austria, "spice 2006" in luxembourg, "spice 2007" in south korea, "spice 2008" in nuremberg, germany and spice 2009 in helsinki, finland. the first versions of the standard focused exclusively on software development processes. this was expanded to cover all related processes in a software business, for example project management, configuration management, quality assurance, and so on. the list of processes covered grew to cover six business areas: * organizational * management * engineering * acquisition supply * support * operations. in a major revision to the draft standard in 2004, the process reference model was removed and is now related to the iso/iec 12207 (software lifecycle processes). the issued standard now specif
ISO/IEC_standards Software_development_process Software_engineering