Background

In June 1994, a working group of industry associations, the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), and the Department of Defense developed an interim standard for the engineering of systems. This effort was led by the G-47 Committee on Systems Engineering of the Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA). EIA/IS 632 was intended to provide a standard for use by commercial enterprises, as well as government agencies and their development contractors.

In April 1995, a formal working group was established under Project PN-3537 and with EIA and INCOSE sponsorship to generate and release this full Standard. The joint working group decided that it would best serve U. S. industry to develop a "top-tier" standard applicable across all industry sectors and technology domains. As a result, the contents of this Standard are an abstraction of the essential features of the engineering practices described in the interim version of this Standard.

Contents of this Standard

This Standard defines a systematic approach to engineering or reengineering a system, incorporating best practices that have evolved during the second half of the twentieth century. The defined approach has three premises:

1. A system is one or more end products and sets of related enabling products that allow end products, over their life cycle of use, to meet stakeholder needs and expectations;

2. Products are an integrated composite of hierarchical elements so integrated as to meet the defined stakeholder requirements;

3. The engineering of a system and its related products is accomplished by applying a set of processes to each...