See also Topic 7.01 - History and Overview of the Software Process Improvement (SPI) Effort

 for additional details on the SPI Initiative.

See also 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

also 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

 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 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).