This document provides an explanation of considerations involved in defining a process. This document gives requirements and recommendations for the description of processes by identifying elements and rules for their formulation.

This document also describes the use of process views.

This document explains how conformance to a process can be defined, when the process is described in accordance with this document.

This document does not describe how processes are composed or otherwise aggregated into larger frameworks or life cycle models. Nor does the document cover how to assess or evaluate the performance of a process, or the output (products) of a process.

NOTE       Two prominent International Standards in process description for software and system engineering are ISO/IEC/IEEE 12207 and ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288. These two standards have very similar process models. The information items associated with their process definitions are given in ISO/IEC/IEEE 15289. Other International Standards provide further characterization of a single life cycle process by elaborating the process elements and levying specific requirements on the execution of the process.

This document is applicable when processes are described for various process definitions in any party, organization or standard relating to systems and software engineering processes.