Enterprise Level Business Systems Development Standards

Enterprise-Level Business Systems: Development Standards

Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA)

As we can forthwith understand from its name, EIA is an alliance between companies operating in the electronics sector (more than 80% manufacturers from a $430 billion industry), formed with the declared goals of defending its members' interests in such areas as international trade and market access, the environment, broadband and Internet security. The initial association of electronics producers was changed in 1997 to an alliance comprising other industrial related areas such as telecommunications (TIA- The Telecommunications Industry Association) or GEIA

The Government Electronics and Information Technology Association). As such (and this is quite important), the alliance does not set any standards itself, but through the associations that form it.

Following the link to the Government Electronics & Information Technology Association page: (http://www.geia.org/),the information I found there on ERP, MRP and CRM development standard was more general: most of the standards were either ISO or IEEE standards and many of the documents were not available or available in then near future. From my point-of-view, as regards to standards (in general) and to development standards n the development of ERP, MRP or CRM applications, these two sites were of no help. There was no information on the enterprise-level business systems either.

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

As the IEEE website states, IEEE is a "non-profit, technical professional association of more than 360,000 individual members in approximately 175 countries." The association itself is a leading authority in many technical areas, among others computer engineering and consumer electronics.

There was very little information available on the website regarding either enterprise-level business systems or development standards in the development of MRP, ERP and CRM applications. The categories I had a look into were software design development and software quality management. The former included the IEEE Standard for Software Quality Assurance Plans (the respective standard best applies to the development and management of critical software, but can also be used for non-critical programs as well). The IEEE standard for software verification and validation, as well as the IEEE standard for software unit testing were also found under this categories, each standard containing certain rules and regulations in that particular phase of the project.

International Organization for Standardization (ISO)

ISO is a non-governmental organization formed from the national standard institutes of 148 countries. The role of the organization is to develop technical standards, but, as it is the case now, these standards tend to have more and more economical and social implications. Standardization means that products produced in different countries have a common legislation and a basic set of rules (set by ISO) for manufacturing and this will certainly ease some of the issues involved in international trade.

We can include MRP, ERP and CRM in the larger sector of e-business software applications. If we refer to e-business, ISO has signed, together with three other organizations (IEC, ITU and UN/ECE), a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in support of e-commerce. This memorandum sets forth a "coordination mechanism" with the role of produce quality standards both for the business transactions and the "products design and manufacturing" (this is where the MRP, ERP and CRM applications may fit in).

Further more, the ISO standards that fit the MRP, ERP and CRM applications can be found under code 35.080, that is under the category Software development and system documentation. Here, the ISO/IEC 6592:2000 referring to Guidelines for the documentation of computer-based application systems best applies to the applications in question. Unfortunately, as it is the case with most of the standards, these are not free on the website, but can be purchased for 116 CHF (Swiss francs). The respective standard documentation comprises 31 pages and is available both in pdf and paper version.

The information technology and office machines category includes several other standards that may be applicable for ERP, MRP and CRM development. I will just mention a few of them that seemed more relevant. They include standards referring to testing the software products (ISO/IEC 12119:1994- Information technology - Software packages -- Quality requirements and testing) and to product evaluation (ISO/IEC 14598:1-6- Product Evaluation), all available under cost. As for the enterprise-level business systems, my research on the ISO website has found no documents or standards in the matter.