DOD-STD-2167A (

Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and supervising the six U.S. armed services: the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, ...

Standard 2167A), titled "Defense Systems Software Development", was a United States

defense standard A United States defense standard, often called a military standard, "MIL-STD", "MIL-SPEC", or (informally) "MilSpecs", is used to help achieve standardization objectives by the United States Department of Defense. Standardization is beneficial i ...

, published on February 29, 1988, which updated the less well known DOD-STD-2167 published 4 June 1985. This document established "uniform requirements for the software development that are applicable throughout the system life cycle." This revision was written to allow the contractor more flexibility and was a significant reorganization and reduction of the previous revision; ''e.g..'', where the previous revision prescribed pages of design and coding standards, this revision only gave one page of general requirements for the contractor's coding standards; while DOD-STD-2167 listed 11 quality factors to be addressed for each software component in the

SRS SRS or SrS may stand for: Organizations and companies Companies *Sperry Rail Service, a rail inspection contractor *Stanford Research Systems, a test and measurement instruments manufacturer * SRS Cinemas, in India * SRS Labs, an American aud ...

, DOD-STD-2167A only tasked the contractor to address relevant quality factors in the SRS. Like DOD-STD-2167, it was designed to be used with DOD-STD-2168, "Defense System Software Quality Program". On December 5, 1994 it was superseded by

MIL-STD-498 MIL-STD-498, ''Military Standard Software Development and Documentation'', was a United States military standard whose purpose was to "establish uniform requirements for software development and documentation." It was released Nov. 8, 1994, and r ...

, which merged DOD-STD-2167A, DOD-STD-7935A, and DOD-STD-2168 into a single document, and addressed some vendor criticisms.

Criticism

One criticism of the standard was that it was biased toward the

Waterfall Model The waterfall model is a breakdown of developmental activities into linear sequential phases, meaning that each phase is passed down onto each other, where each phase depends on the deliverables of the previous one and corresponds to a speciali ...

. Although the document states "the contractor is responsible for selecting software development methods (for example, rapid prototyping)", it also required "formal reviews and audits" that seemed to lock the vendor into designing and documenting the system before any implementation began. Another criticism was the focus on design documents, to the exclusion of

Computer-Aided Software Engineering Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) is a domain of software tools used to design and implement applications. CASE tools are similar to and are partly inspired by computer-aided design (CAD) tools used for designing hardware products. CASE ...

(CASE) tools being used in the industry. Vendors would often use the CASE tools to design the software, then write several standards-required documents to describe the CASE-formatted data. This created problems matching design documents to the actual product.

Predecessors

DOD-STD-2167 and DOD-STD-2168 (often mistakenly referred to as "MIL-STD-2167" and "MIL-STD-2168" respectively) are the official specification numbers for superseded U.S. DoD military standards describing documents and procedures required for developing

military computer This article specifically addresses U.S. armed forces military computers and their use. History Some of the earliest computers were military computers. Military requirements for portability and ruggedness led to some of the earliest transistor ...

systems. Specifically: "Frameworks for quality software process: SEI Capability Maturity...", Springerlink.com, 2007, webpage PDF:
SL6-PDF
states, "MIL-STD-2167 is the standard many DoD contractors have had to deliver...whereas MIL-STD-2168 is the DoD's quality assurance standard." * DOD-STD-2167 described the necessary project documentation to be delivered when developing a "Mission-Critical" computer software system. * DOD-STD-2168 was the DoD's

software quality assurance Software quality assurance (SQA) is a means and practice of monitoring all software engineering processes, methods, and work products to ensure compliance against defined standards. It may include ensuring conformance to standards or models, suc ...

standard, titled "Defense System Software Quality Program".

Successors

One result of these criticisms was to begin designing a successor standard, which became

. Another result was a preference for formal industry-designed standards (such as IEEE 12207) and informal "

best practice A best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to alternatives because it tends to produce superior results. Best practices are used to achieve quality as an alternative to mandatory standards. Best practice ...

" specifications, rather than trying to determine the best processes and making them formal requirements on suppliers. MIL-STD-2167A with MIL-STD-498 eventually became the basis for DO-178 in the early 1980s, with DO-178 receiving subsequent revisions. MIL-STD-2167 and MIL-STD-498 together define standard software development life cycle processes that are expected to be implemented and followed as well as prescriptively defining standard document format and content. In contrast, the less proscriptive DO-178B/C defines objectives that should be accomplished as ''acceptable means'' of demonstrating airworthiness, permitting relative flexibility in the life cycles and processes employed to accomplish those objectives.

References

{{reflist, 30em

External links

The DOD-STD-2167 standard

The DOD-STD-2167A standard

MIL-HDBK-287 A Tailoring Guide for DOD-STD-2167A

Military perspective on replacing DOD-STD-2167A with MIL-STD-498

Military statement together with DOD-STD-2167A with FAM-DRE-231
United States Department of Defense standards 1988 documents Software development