scope:

This International Standard contains requirements and recommendations for the evaluation of software product quality and clarifies the general concepts. This document provides a process description for evaluating software product quality and states the requirements for the application of this process. The evaluation process can be used for different purposes and approaches. The process can be used for the evaluation of the quality of pre-developed software, commercial-off-the shelf software or custom software and can be used during or after the development process. This International Standard establishes the relationship of the evaluation reference model to the SQuaRE documents as well as shows how each SQuaRE document should be used during the activities of the evaluation process. This International Standard is intended for those responsible for software product evaluation and is appropriate for developers, acquirers and independent evaluators of software products. These three different approaches are detailed in specific standards ISO/IEC 14598-3, -4, and -5. This International Standard is not intended for evaluation of other aspects of software products (such as functional requirements, process requirements, business requirements etc.).