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MIL-STD-498, Military Standard Software Development and Documentation, was a United States military standard whose purpose was to "establish uniform requirements for software development and documentation." It was released Nov. 8, 1994, and replaced DOD-STD-2167A, DOD-STD-2168, DOD-STD-7935A, and DOD-STD-1703. It was meant as an interim standard, to be in effect for about two years until a commercial standard was developed.
Unlike previous efforts like the seminal DOD-STD-2167A which was mainly focused on the risky new area of software development, MIL-STD-498 was the first[citation needed] attempt at comprehensive description of the systems development life-cycle. MIL-STD-498 was the baseline for industry standards (e.g. IEEE 828-2012, IEEE 122077-2017) that followed it. It also contains much of the material that the subsequent professionalization of project management covered in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). The document "MIL-STD-498 Overview and Tailoring Guidebook" is 98 pages. The "MIL-STD-498 Application and Reference Guidebook" is 516 pages. Associated to these were document templates, or Data Item Descriptions, described below, bringing documentation and process order that could scale to projects of the size humans were then conducting (aircraft, battleships, canals, dams, factories, satellites, submarines, etcetera).
It was one of the few military standards that survived the "Perry Memo", then U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry's 1994 memorandum commanding the discontinuation of defense standards. However, it was canceled on May 27, 1998, and replaced by the essentially identical demilitarized version EIA J-STD-016[1][2] as a process example guide for IEEE 12207. Several programs outside of the U.S. military continued to use the standard due to familiarity and perceived advantages over alternative standards, such as free availability of the standards documents and presence of process detail including contractually-usable Data Item Descriptions.
In military airborne software, MIL-STD-498 was gradually eclipsed by the civilian airborne software guideline, RTCA DO-178B.[3]
- ^ Reed Sorensen (June 1996). "MIL-STD-498, J-STD-016, and the U.S. Commercial Standard". CrossTalk Magazine. Archived from the original on 2004-12-16.
- ^ "Software Standards". Archived from the original on 2013-03-17.
J-STD-016 is the "demilitarized" version of Mil-STD-498
- ^ "Aviation Development & Certification Tech Info". AFuzion. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
In the latter '90's and early 2000's, DO-178B gradually eclipsed MIL-STD-498 for numerous reasons including avionics commonality between civil and military applications, re-use, improved supplier management, improved schedule and cost performance ... and tighter integration with provable safety guidelines [ ARP4754, and ARP4761 ]