Extending ISO/IEC 12207 with software product management: A process reference model proposal

Abstract

Software product management is generally expected to link and integrate business and product related goals with core software engineering and software life cycle activities. Empirical research demonstrates the positive effect of mature software product management practices on key software development performance indicators. Nevertheless, the various frameworks available for software product management have distinct and diverse focus points, are often linked or incorporated with specific development paradigms, or lack integration with or addressing of core software engineering activities. On the other hand, traditional software process improvement approaches generally lack the provision of explicit or detailed software product management activities. - In this paper we build on the results of preceding research on identifying a lack of software product management practices within ISO/IEC 12207 and on deriving key outcomes of software product management activities from selected software product management frameworks. Based on these results we propose a process reference model for software product management that can be integrated with the process reference model as defined in ISO/IEC 12207 for software life cycle processes. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.