e-Talk Radio: Magee, Stan, and Peter Voldner, 22 March 2001

technology for U.S. and international corporations and organizations. He is the convener of the working group 7 within ISO on lifecycle management for, and here's a long acronym, ISOIECJTC1ST7WG7, which is the software engineering standards group. He's been a U.S. delegate to the international plenary meeting since 1986. In 1995, Stan was elected to the IEEE computer society's Golden Core of 500 people who have significantly served the IEEE society in standards development over its 50-year history. He has written several books, one which is a guide to standards and specifications for designing Web software. And also one called Software Engineering Standards and Specifications, which are available through amazon.com and most notably, through Stan's Web site, which is www.12207.com, and we'll mention more about that after. Stan's got a lot of history. He's got just an incredible amount of expertise. And you'll be very interested to hear what he's got to tell us about standards today. So welcome, Stan.

Stan: Thank you very much, Carol.

Carol: Peter, who is our other colleague who's on the line, is President of Peregrine Software, a firm whose goal is to help its clients reach higher productivity and quality, using the latest in industry best practices, including preparation for ISO 9001. Tools include things like software engineering standards from ISO, IEEE, the IT infrastructure library, and various other software process assessment models reflecting the latest industry best software practices. Over the past 28 years, he's been involved in all phases of software lifecycle, including planning, development, QA, methods development, field support, and marketing. He's an IEEE recognized lecturer in several software engineering courses. He's been the chair of the Canadian ISO committee on software engineering, and he also participates in working group 7 on the software lifecycle process standards. So joining us from Ottawa, Ontario, is Peter Voldner. Welcome to the show, Peter.

Peter: Thanks, Carol. It's actually Toronto. But we're delighted to be here.

Carol: Oh, you're in Toronto. I didn't realize you were in Toronto. And for anybody who is not Canadian listening to this show, Toronto and Ottawa are two completely different cities. Correct, Peter?

Peter: Right.

Carol: And Stan joins us from Seattle, Washington. And I'm joining you from Florida. So we've got pretty much the North American continent covered today. I'd like to get right into the questions. I guess my question and that of many of our listeners is really what's this whole thing about software standards about? People have heard about ISO 9000. Any time I tell anyone that I'm associated with ISO, they say, "Oh, you know all about ISO 9000." And that's not really the case. There's many ISO standards, isn't that correct, Stan?

Stan: Yes, Carol. Thank you for that question. When most people hear the word "standard," it has about as much appeal to them as having to go to the dentist for a root canal. And so, a lot of times, people have a bad connotation about standards. Standards came about in the late 1800s, when fire companies would go to various other areas and they could not hook their hoses to the fire hydrants. So the world said we need to have a standard for fire hydrants, so we can hook the hoses up. Today, we have standards from everything from animal traps to dentistry equipment. And standards are produced at the international level, the national level, by professional bodies, and by trade groups. Today, we will be talking about software engineering process standards. There are 17 core software engineering process standards, such as quality, test, and documentation. There are