Engineering Harmony Between Systems and Software

Recent process improvement initiatives (Paulk et al. 1993; Software Engineering Institute 1994) have focused on maturing the processes for systems and software engineering. However, these initiatives address the systems and software engineering processes separately. The separation makes it difficult for developers of software-intensive systems, who must deal with the systems/software interface issues, to make effective use of systems or software process improvements. This paper lists the requirements needed to establish a harmonious development interface between systems and software engineering and describes a process that has been created to meet these interface requirements.