MIL-STD-498

This set of pages contains information on the US Department of Defense's standard 498 for the management of software development.

HTML form

You can view the standard in HTML form.

HTML download

You can download these HTML pages (301906 bytes).

PDF download

You can download a nice set of PDF files; I've provided .tar.gz form (1310709 bytes), which WinZip will cope with if you aren't on a UNIX system. The README for this is slightly inaccurate; most times on UNIX systems with GNU tar, you can just say

  tar zxvf 498-unix.tar.gz

FAQ

Hasn't MIL-STD-498 been cancelled?

The position is that the DoD no longer want to fund standards such as 498 (it was always a bit of a stopgap). They now use IEEE 12207.

None the less, there are still people (eg, prime contractors for UK MoD projects) who stick with 498, for various reasons:

498 is freely accessible electronically -- the IEEE standards aren't, they get income from sale of standards documents
498 comes with DIDs, the IEEE standard doesn't
There's not a very great deal of difference between the standards anyway (I can't vouch for that one!)

(The last of those is pretty suspect. A 498 project would fit fairly well under the IEEE standard, but not vice versa, since the IEEE one is much less prescriptive).

Simon Wright