1. Requirements

6.3.8 The NASA Headquarters' Office of the Chief Engineer shall authorize appraisals against selected requirements in this NPR (including NASA Headquarters' Office of the Chief Engineer approved subsets and alternative sets of requirements) to check compliance.

1.1 Notes">1.1 Notes

NPR 7150.2 does not include any notes for this requirement.

1.2 Applicability Across Classes

Key:    A_SC = Class A Software, Safety-Critical | A_NSC = Class A Software, Not Safety-Critical | ... | - Applicable | - Not Applicable
^X - Applicable with details, read above for more | P(C) - P(Center), follow center requirements or procedures

2. Rationale

The Headquarters Office of the Chief Engineer (OCE) is responsible for promoting and monitoring software engineering practices throughout the agency. It achieves this in part by administering software requirements, policy, procedures, processes, statutes, and regulations. Headquarters OCE uses continuing periodic oversight of compliance at the Centers and programs/projects to verify that this responsibility is being met.

NPR 7150.2 serves as the basis for compliance appraisals for software engineering. The appraisal typically occurs during an OCE survey of a Center's processes and directives, and through examinations of a project's official records. These surveys are one of the tools used by the OCE to provide oversight, to maintain internal control and to review its operations. 

While SWE-129 is written from the OCE point of view, the requirement also contains an inherent Center role, i.e., participation in the OCE appraisal activities. A Center's support of this SWE can be assessed by considering the extent of its preparations for and involvement in these OCE surveys.

3. Guidance

The Headquarters Office of the Chief Engineer (OCE) controls and maintains an appraisal process for use in periodic Center and project surveys.  The OCE appraisal process achieves several objectives. They are:

• Review Center and specified NASA Headquarters organizations' processes and infrastructure for compliance with OCE requirements, policy, procedures, processes, statutes, and regulations
• Review specific program/project "files" for compliance with requirements, policy, procedures, processes, statutes, and regulations
• Identify systemic problems or deficiencies
• Recognize areas of excellence/best practices
• Receive Center feedback regarding areas where agency policy and requirements should be modified

Currently, the OCE compliance surveys focus on the following core elements:

• Common framework for unified program and project life cycle
• Program and project review structure
• Technical authority implementation
• Dissenting opinions and deviation/waiver process
• Software engineering management
• Systems engineering
• Lessons learned
• Technical standards
• Other
  

In addition to NPR 7150.2, the Headquarters OCE appraisal may also include a review of the following documents, to the extent they involve software engineering:

• NPD 7120.4D, NASA Engineering and Program/Project Policy
• NPR 7123.1A, NASA Systems Engineering Requirements
• NASA STD-8739.8 Software Assurance Standard
• NASA STD-8719.13 Software Safety Standard

The two NASA standards in this list are traditionally covered in detail by OSMA audits conducted by the NASA Safety Center.

The OCE and appraisal teams chartered by the OCE plan the scope and content of the appraisal survey. A Survey Leader is typically named by the OCE to provide overall event planning and coordination, as well as serving as a liaison between the OCE and the Center's point of contact or survey manager.

The process of determining the scope for a survey addresses the following items at a minimum:

• Requirements implementation and compliance
• Results from audits, reviews, and assessments conducted by other organizations
• Trends identified across the Agency or within a single organization

Preparations for the survey typically include reviews of the flow down of NASA OCE requirements to Center procedural documents, reviews of organization and program/project specific documentation and reviews of other surveys, audits and assessments. The complete description of this nominally week-long event can be found in the OCE Requirements Compliance Survey Process  file located on the NASA Engineering Network (NEN) website. See the OCE Requirements Compliance Survey Process  document for information about team formation, a generic time-line, and other helpful guidance.

What follows in this guidance is a brief summary of the software engineering appraisal process. The main thrust of the software sub-team's appraisal is built into a set of twenty five questions from the OCE. This baseline set of questions serves as guidance to the Center or project to communicate what the OCE wants to review. The survey leader will communicate these questions to the Center's survey manager three to four weeks before the event, who in turn conveys them to the software point of contact. (SW POC). This is usually the Center's NASA Software Working Group (SWG) primary representative.

 The 2010 OCE SW Survey Generic Worksheet, located on the NEN website, is a useful template for preparing responses to the specific questions.

The set of provided questions are typically the same for all Center surveys, although the actual questions included in the survey may be tailored, based on results learned/obtained from other appraisal activities.  Reviews of partial Center (P (Center)) determinations (see SWE-140) will be included in the survey activities. Also included will be reviews of general exclusions or alternate requirements approved against requirements in NPR 7150.2 (see [SWE-120]). 

The software appraisal activity begins during the survey planning process with the OCE Pre-Brief Presentation. A major component of this pre-brief is the discussion of selection parameters that are used to determine which projects and software activities will be a part of the survey. This pre-brief meeting is nominally held 6-8 weeks prior to the start of the survey. The actual survey event includes entrance presentations, document reviews by the OCE survey team, interviews of Center and project personnel by the survey team, development and review of initial findings, a review for surfacing general or systemic findings, and a summary presentation to members of management. The last activity is usually an exit briefing, which is the survey team's first formal opportunity to present their findings to the senior management of the surveyed organization.  A series of follow-on actions are defined and assigned.

As in many reviews and appraisal activities, compliance is often measured against objective evidence.   Expected content and types of this objective quality evidence are usually defined in the preparation for the software survey. This defined material provides the basis for confirmation of compliance with requirements and identification of strengths and weaknesses.  The Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute) provides the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) appraisal method for process improvement.  The method provides an excellent discussion of the philosophy and types of objective evidence. While the information presented is centered on evaluating (CMMI) process implementation, the discussions and explanations should provide good background information to people who are relatively inexperienced in appraisals and surveys.

4. Small Projects

Typically, the Office of the Chief Engineer includes a small project in the survey activities at a Center. The OCE survey leader will work with the Center SW POC to develop the appropriate level of survey involvement for small projects.

5. Resources

These first three files can be found in the OCE Software Survey Instructions and Templates folder, within the OCE NASA Engineering Network (NEN) site. Taken as a group, these documents provide guidance to both headquarters and Center personnel for the preparation and conduct of OCE NPR 7150.2 appraisal surveys.

1. OCE Requirements Compliance Survey Process, 2010
2. 2010 OCE SW Generic Workbook, 2010
3. OCE Pre-Brief Presentation Template, 2010
4. NASA Systems Engineering Handbook, NASA/SP-2007-6105 Rev1, 2007
5. NASA Directives and Charters Procedural Requirements, NPR 1400.1E, 2011
6. NASA Systems Engineering Processes and Requirements with Change 1, NPR 7123.1A, 2009
7. NASA Headquarters Office of the Chief Engineer engineering deviations and waivers website
8. NASA Software Safety Standard, NASA STD 8719.13  (Rev B w/ Ch1 of 7/8/2004), 2004
9. NASA Software Assurance Standard, NASA STD 8739.8, 2005
10. NASA Governance and Strategic Management Handbook, NPD 1000.0A, 2008
11. NASA Engineering and Program/Project Management Policy, NPD 7120.4D, 2010
12. NASA Space Flight Program and Project Management Requirements, NPR 7120.5D (NM-7120.81), 2009.
13. NASA Software Formal Inspection Standard, NASA-STD-2202-93, 1993

5.1 Tools

Tools to aid in compliance with this SWE, if any, may be found in the Tools Library in the NASA Engineering Network (NEN).

NASA users find this in the Tools Library in the Software Processes Across NASA (SPAN) site of the Software Engineering Community in NEN.

The list is informational only and does not represent an “approved tool list”, nor does it represent an endorsement of any particular tool. The purpose is to provide examples of tools being used across the Agency and to help projects and centers decide what tools to consider.

6. Lessons Learned

No lessons learned have currently been identified for this requirement.