1. Requirements

2.1.5.2 Center Director, or designee, shall maintain, staff, and implement a plan to continually advance the Center’s in-house software engineering capability and monitor the software engineering capability of NASA's contractors.

1.1 Notes

The recommended practices and guidelines for the content of a Center Software Engineering Improvement Plan are defined in NASA-HDBK-2203, NASA Software Engineering Handbook.  Each Center has a current Center Software Engineering Improvement Plan on file in the NASA Chief Engineer’s office

1.2 History

2. Rationale

This requirement allows the Agency to have insight into each Center's plans for maintaining in-house software engineering capabilities and Center processes used to monitor the software engineering capability of the contractors supporting the Center's projects. 

See also Topic Review - 7.01 - History and Overview of the Software Process Improvement (SPI) Effort for additional details on the SPI Initiative.

3. Guidance

Organizations should implement a plan or activities to continually advance the Center’s in-house software engineering capability and monitor the software engineering capability of NASA's contractors.  A written Center software Engineering Improvement Plan is not required, organizations should have a documented approach for the organization's software improvement activities.

The Center improvement activities address how that Center will continually advance the Center's in-house software engineering capabilities and define how the Center will monitor the software engineering capability of the Center's software contractors. The Center's improvement activities are to be maintained and updated as needed to reflect the Center's software engineering activities. Centers are responsible for maintaining and implementing the Agency's software engineering capabilities. The Center improvement activities are required to ensure that an approach is defined and that the Center stakeholders are in agreement with the activities, and that the activities are being monitored and controlled.

See Review - SWE-095 - Report Engineering Discipline Status for guidance on reporting on the status of the Center’s software engineering discipline, as applied to its projects, upon request by the OCE, OSMA, or OCHMO.

See Review - SWE-208 - Advancing Software Assurance and Software Safety Practices for guidance on NASA Chief, SMA shall lead and maintain a NASA Software Assurance and Software Safety Initiative to advance software assurance and software safety practices.

The purpose of this requirement is to ensure that each Center Director (or designee): 

• Defines and documents an approach for maintaining in-house software engineering capabilities and how the Center monitors the software engineering capability of the contractors supporting the Center’s projects.
• Defines and documents the processes to be used by that Center’s software development organizations, including standards, procedures, templates, requirements, and policies that need to be performed.
• Reviews (by the relevant stakeholders) and ensures agreement, acceptance, and willingness to support the activities within a Center and with NASA Headquarters.
• Enables revision and maintenance of the activities as necessary.

A common approach used by Centers is the setup and utilization of one or more Software Engineering Process Group(s) (SEPG), staffed by members and stakeholders in the community, whose main charter is to plan, assist, and assure the day-to-day implementation of the planned activities for process and discipline improvements. The SEPG also reviews these activities on a regular basis to assure that the improvements are maintained. In addition to staffing the SEPG, the Center provides appropriate staffing to train and implement the process improvements within its software engineering community.  See also Review - SWE-005 - Software Processes. Addresses Centers establishing an SEPG and a Process Asset Library. 

3.1 Guidance Related To Center Software Engineering Improvements

1. A Center software engineering improvement approach should include:
   1. Process improvement goal(s).
   2. Scope of process improvement.
   3. All Center organizations are responsible for the performance of mission-critical software development, management, and acquisition.
   4. The Center's tactic for phasing in improvements (e.g., domain phasing and organizational phasing).
   5. The Center's tactic for monitoring Center software engineering improvements progress, including responsibilities.
   6. Strategies and objectives.
   7. The Center's tactic for supporting the implementation of all strategies.
   8. Schedule.
   9. The Center’s tactic or approach for phasing in new and upgraded NASA Headquarters requirements.

See also SWE-032 - CMMI Levels for Class A and B Software, SWE-036 - Software Process Determination, SWE-098 - Agency Process Asset Library.

See also Review - SWE-002 - Software Engineering Initiative for the requirement on the Software Engineering Initiative. 

3.2 Additional Guidance

Additional guidance related to this requirement may be found in the following materials in this Handbook:

3.3 Center Process Asset Libraries

See the following link(s) in SPAN for process assets from contributing Centers (NASA Only). 

4. Small Projects

Center requirements and policies apply to small projects as defined in the Center documentation.

5. Resources

5.1 References

5.2 Tools

6. Lessons Learned

6.1 NASA Lessons Learned

No Lessons Learned have currently been identified for this requirement.

6.2 Other Lessons Learned

No other Lessons Learned have currently been identified for this requirement.