ISO 12207 Software Life Cycle Processes and family of software quality standards

These standards are appropriate for an organization which develops software and wants to formalize their improvement process. The authors have developed a flexible structure which allows your organization freedom, while at the same time providing "backbone." By using the ISO structure, the howls of the programmers will be slightly muted by reference to the outside and accepted authority.
If you have problems with your software development lifecycle, these standards and quality plans make a great road map to developing a better product.

ISO has been in the software business since the 60s with the mandate for: "Standardization of processes, supporting tools and supporting technologies for the engineering of software products and systems, as described in its terms of reference." There are currently 69 published standards, going to 81 by early '04.
Several of these standards relate to software quality, and can be seen as building a house (start from the foundation and build up):

Roof: The top is the series of 6 14598 standards which say how you will evaluate the software at each life cycle stage to determine if it meets the characteristics.

Second Floor: 9126 series defines the quality characteristics of software at the life cycle stages.

First Floor: ISO 12207-95 defining the steps in the software development and use cycle. This structure will form the next 2 standards.

Foundation: ISO 9003-97 or ISO 9001:2000 defining the overall quality management system, with document control, records, etc.

The full titles of these standards (Available from ISO) are:

ISO 9000-3:1997 Quality management and quality assurance standards -- Part 3: Guidelines for the application of ISO 9001:1994 to the development, supply, installation and maintenance of computer software
ISO 9001:2000 Quality management systems -- Requirements
ISO/IEC 12207:1995 Information technology -- Software life cycle processes
ISO/IEC 9126-1:2001 Software engineering -- Product quality -- Part 1: Quality model
ISO/IEC TR 9126-2:2003 Software engineering -- Product quality -- Part 2: External metrics
ISO/IEC TR 9126-3:2003 Software engineering -- Product quality -- Part 3: Internal metrics
ISO/IEC 14598-1:1999 Information technology -- Software product evaluation -- Part 1: General overview
ISO/IEC 14598-2:2000 Software engineering -- Product evaluation -- Part 2: Planning and management
ISO/IEC 14598-3:2000 Software engineering -- Product evaluation -- Part 3: Process for developers
ISO/IEC 14598-4:1999 Software engineering -- Product evaluation -- Part 4: Process for acquirers
ISO/IEC 14598-5:1998 Information technology -- Software product evaluation -- Part 5: Process for evaluators
ISO/IEC 14598-6:2001 Software engineering -- Product evaluation -- Part 6: Documentation of evaluation modules

The ISO Software technical committee responsible for this remarkable set of documents (80 standards in one field is a lot) is Technical Committee 7.