A COMAPRATIVE STUDY BETWEEN PMBoK/DoD AND ECSS/MANAGEMENT PROCESS FOR SOFTWARE ACQUISITION

This article presents a comparative study between the ECSS standards, more specifically in terms of the requirements of the ECSS software management process and the defenseintensive processes of PMBOK DoD. Since there is a sense that a complete comparison study is a lengthy process, the scope of comparison is restricted to space software acquisition. Most of the software systems are developed under contracts in which the government is the customer and the contractor is generally a space industry company. Both government and industry use project management processes in order to build the required system successfully within cost, time, quality, and risk requirements. On the contracting side (government) there are two well known approaches for project management for software acquisition: PMBOK and ECSS. The motivation is to facilitate the relationship between customer and software provider when the customer is a space agency who is familiar with ECSS processes and the software provider is familiar with the practices of the PMBOK guide. The results of this comparison demonstrate that there is a great deal of similarity in terms of what is expected in ECSS and what the PMBOK DoD can provide. We believe that the study can diminish the gap between the two approaches and provide a better understanding of the ECSS for the aerospace industry, which is used to the practices of PMBOK.