Overview
ISO/IEC/IEEE 24748-6:2023 - "Systems and software engineering - Life cycle management - Part 6: System and software integration" provides supplemental requirements and practical guidance for planning and performing system and software integration. It clarifies how the integration process from ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 and ISO/IEC/IEEE 12207 should be applied, defines required information items (including content expectations), and explains integration relationships with other life cycle processes. The standard applies to human-made and software-intensive systems of any scope, size or complexity.
Key topics and technical requirements
- Integration process planning: guidance on developing an integration strategy, efficiency considerations, integration context, and the creation of an integration plan as a primary information item.
- Interface and aggregation concepts: definitions and requirements for interface definition, progressive interface elaboration, aggregation and synthesis of system elements.
- Verification, validation and regression testing: explains the role of verification and validation during iterative integration and requirements for regression testing when components change.
- Iteration and recursion: guidance for iterative and recursive application of integration activities across development cycles.
- Integration enabling systems: considerations for tools, testbeds and environments that support integration activities.
- Roles, competencies and methods: identifies responsibilities for integration teams and recommended methods to perform integration tasks.
- Information items and conformance: specifies content requirements for documents produced by integration (e.g., integration plans, records) and how to demonstrate conformance - full or tailored - to the listed integration processes.
- Systems-of-systems and life cycle coverage: guidance for integrating complex, composed systems and integrating throughout multiple life cycle stages.
- Supporting artifacts: includes guidance such as coupling matrices (Annex A) and mapping of integration relationships to other processes.
Practical applications and who uses this standard
ISO/IEC/IEEE 24748-6:2023 is used to:
- Develop and audit integration plans, test strategies, and interface definitions for hardware-software systems.
- Ensure integration activities comply with life cycle management processes and evidence requirements.
- Guide systems integrators, software engineers, systems engineers, integration managers, test engineers, project managers, suppliers and compliance officers in complex or software-intensive projects.
- Support systems-of-systems integration, progressive delivery models, and environments with recurring regression testing needs.
Related standards
- ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 - Systems life cycle processes
- ISO/IEC/IEEE 12207 - Software life cycle processes
- ISO/IEC/IEEE 15289 - Life cycle process documentation guidance
Keywords: ISO/IEC/IEEE 24748-6:2023, system integration, software integration, life cycle management, integration plan, interfaces, verification and validation, systems-of-systems, ISO 15288, ISO 12207.