ISO STANDARDS FOR SOFTWARE
DOCUMENTATION
ISO standards
ISO stands for International Organization
for Standardization
Standards make an enormous and positive
contribution to most aspects of our lives.
Standards ensure desirable characteristics
of products and services such as quality,
environmental friendliness, safety,
reliability, efficiency and interchangeability -
and at an economical cost
ISO standards – Why?
make the development, manufacturing and
supply of products and services more
efficient, safer and cleaner
facilitate trade between countries and make
it fairer
provide governments with a technical base
for health, safety and environmental
legislation, and conformity assessment
ISO standards – Why?
share technological advances and good
management practice
disseminate innovation
safeguard consumers, and users in general,
of products and services
make life simpler by providing solutions to
common problems
Documentation standards in ISO
To provide guidelines to standardize
development and assessment of technical
documentation for the software industry.
Software sector has progressed. Standards
to improve and match.
To improve level and quality of
documentation for variety of software
applications.
Scope of ISO 18019
Comprehensive coverage of all activities in a
document development project
Guidelines
Needs analysis and requirements definition
Analysis and design of requirements
Development of the document
Presentation of the document
Contents of ISO 18019
Features
Checklists for various tasks in the process
Practical recommendations
Experience based suggestions on
presentation and layout
Forms and design tips
Contents of ISO 18019
Important elements
Forms of documentation : Electronic and
paper
Defining objectives : Product definition,
product usability, sales objectives…
Analysis and design : Audience analysis,
Business tasks performed
Planning : Documentation plan, personnel,
costs, equipment, schedules, milestones…
Contents of ISO 18019
Important elements
Development and review : Preparing and
issuing drafts, reviews, usability testing,
preparation of master documents, handing
over the finished documentation, archiving
and versioning
Guidelines for the design of the
documentation : Overviews, description of
tasks, definitions, error messages,
navigation, colors, text, graphics…
Contents of ISO 18019
Existing standards
IS9127 User documentation and cover
information for consumer software
packages.
Details minimum information requirements that
should be visible on the outside of a shrink-
wrapped software package and that in the
enclosed documentation
Contents of ISO 18019
Existing standards
ISO/IEC TR9294 Guidelines for the
management of software documentation
Covers the interface between management and
documentation
BS 7649:1993
Guide to the design and preparation of
documentation for users of application software
Contents of ISO 18019
Existing standards
IS15910 Software user documentation
process
To define the process of documentation as a
part of the software development process
BS 7830:1996
Guide to the design and preparation of
documentation for users of application software
