1. Standards Have Been Very, Very Good to Me
George Hacken
Senior Director, Train-Control Software
MTA/New York City Transit

2. A Personal-Experience Enumeration
Mil-Std-1679A (U.S. Navy, S/W Devel.)
Mil-S (S/W Quality Specification)
DoD-Std-2167 and –2167A (DoD S/W Devel.)
Mil-Std-483 (Configuration Management)
Mil-Std-1521 (Reviews and Audits)
Mil-Std-490 (Specification Practices)
Mil-Hdbk-287 (One of several Tailoring Handbooks)
DoD-Std-2168 and –2168A (S/W Quality Assurance)
Mil-Std-498 (S/W Devel. & Documentation)

3. A Personal-Experience Enumeration (continued)
SEI/CMM v1.1 (Process Model)
Mil-Std-882 and DO-178 (Safety/Hazard)
J-Std-016 (Software Development/Acquis.)
ISO/IEC and IEEE/EIA (Life-Cycle)
IEEE 1483 (Safety: Rail-Transit)
IEEE 1558 (S/W Documentation: Rail Eqp)

4. Standards’ ‘Side-Effects’
(… on the premise that the chief purpose of a standard is as part of a contract of adherence, i.e., Thou shalt comply, or else.)
Standards are agents for the promulgation of a common language among interested parties
As such, they cut the Tower of Babel down to size.

5. Standards’ ‘Side-Effects’
Standards as learning-tools: They expose the reader to such concepts as
The Software Life-Cycle
‘Canonical’ software documentation that is deliverable: SDP (SPMP); SCMP; SQAP SRS; STP; SDD; SPS; SVD
Process- and product-measurements & metrics
Requirement-allocation, -management, -traceability
Verification and Validation
Configuration Management; Baselines

6. Standards’ ‘Side-Effects’
Standards as teaching-tools
Standards can form the basis of a project-specific curriculum that treats the project’s software life-cycle and its processes and products
Standards can form the basis of an organization-wide curriculum that treats the general Software Project Life-Cycle and its processes and products

7. Attributes of Standards
A given standard can be predominantly
Prescriptive, or predominantly
Descriptive
(I’ve seen instances of none-of-the-above, but that’s an issue of (in)comprehensibility of the standard in question.)

8. Conclusions
The Contracts- and Legal-Departments have the prerogative of saying whether or not the standards we’re considering are very, very useful within the standards’ chief purpose.

9. Conclusions
For my part, I would assert – on the basis of decades’ worth of Real Life – that standards have indeed been very useful in what I have described as their side-effects.
I’ll be glad to elaborate my reasons for having found prescriptive standards to be particularly useful.
This continues to surprise me, given all the grumbling about ‘being handcuffed’ that I’d done.