The ESA Software Engineering Standard and Its Applicability to HEP

The European Space Agency (ESA) began development of its Software Engineering Standard PSS-05 in 1984 and this effort culminated with the release of the current version, version 2, in 1991. The standard has since been successfully applied to a large number of ESA projects. In 1994 the standard was brought into the public domain through its publication by Prentice Hall and since then has been adopted by a number of other organisations. For many of these organisations it now forms the basis of their Quality Management Systems (QMS). In 1994 CERN became interested in PSS-05 and has since that date applied it to a number of projects with varying degrees of success. In 1996 a Software Engineering Standard User Group (SESUG) was set-up by representatives of 12 European organisations; all major users of PSS-05. The SESUG has since initiated the preparation of a new version of the standard that is intended to take into account not only new developments in information technology but also the extensive experience gained by members of the SESUG through the application of PSS-05 in their domains. The paper is intended to address the applicability of PSS-05 in the High Energy Physics (HEP) community. It starts by giving a brief overview of the standard itself and of the goals and benefits of applying it to software development projects. It summarises how the standard has been applied to projects at CERN and highlights the benefits and difficulties that have encountered on these projects. The paper then provides an overview of the improvements that are proposed for the next issue of the standard and indicates how these address the problem areas experience by CERN applying version 2 of the standard.