1. Requirements

2.1.5.11 Each Center Director, or designee, shall contribute applicable software engineering process assets in use at his/her Centers to the Agency-wide process asset library. 

1.1 Notes

NPR 7150.2, NASA Software Engineering Requirements, does not include any notes for this requirement.

1.2 History

2. Rationale

To reduce the risk and cost associated with software development and use on NASA projects.

3. Guidance

3.1 Agency Process Asset Library

The Agency-wide process asset library (PAL) is a collection of processes, procedures, job aids, examples, and other recommended best practices. These assets are intended to facilitate the software development process Agency-wide. To make this asset library complete, useful, and representative of all Centers across the Agency, it is necessary for all Centers to contribute assets to the collection.

When choosing items for the Agency-wide PAL to use the following concepts to help guide that selection:

• Include documentation and job aids that describe “what to do” or “how to do something”.
• Select the best examples.
• Have those assets reviewed by the appropriate Center authority (an organizational group at the Center such as a Division, Branch, or level of the organization where CMMI® appraisals are being done) before submitting for inclusion in the PAL?
• For process assets where the approval level is not the Center (maybe the Office of the Chief Engineer (OCE) or the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA)) or, in some cases, presentations were done by the Software Working Group (SWG) members accepted at conferences, these items can be submitted, but there must be some vetting before submission.
• Perhaps make this an annual review preceding a NASA Software Working Group meeting.
• Perhaps include this as part of a project’s post-mortem retrospective.
• Sensitive but Unclassified (SBU) material, proprietary data, and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) data should not be submitted. 

As described on the NASA Engineering Network website (accessible to NASA users from the SPAN tab in this Handbook), areas of interest include:

• Processes and procedures are driven by policies at NASA:
  • Management, including estimation, class transition, planning, monitoring and control, and risk.
  • Engineering, including requirements, design, code and integration, peer reviews, verification and validation, release, sustaining, retirement.
  • Support, including software assurance, safety, configuration management, decision making, metrics, and process improvement.
  • Acquisition, including purchasing and contracting.
  • Process related assets:
    • Templates, checklists, forms.
    • Examples of project artifacts.
    • Training documents.
    • Standards, guides.
    • Logs, databases.
    • Manuals.
    • Reports, metrics.
    • Plans.
    • Tools frequently used in developing projects.
    • Milestone review documents.

3.2 Additional Guidance

Additional guidance related to this requirement may be found in the following materials in this Handbook:

3.3 Center Process Asset Libraries

See the following link(s) in SPAN for process assets from contributing Centers (NASA Only). 

4. Small Projects

This requirement applies to all projects regardless of size.  Process assets from small projects may be useful for other small projects in their efforts to meet the requirements of this NPR.

5. Resources

5.1 References

5.2 Tools

6. Lessons Learned

6.1 NASA Lessons Learned

No Lessons Learned have currently been identified for this requirement.

6.2 Other Lessons Learned

No other Lessons Learned have currently been identified for this requirement.