MIL-STD-498

MIL-STD-498 (Military-Standard-498) was a United States military standard whose purpose was to "establish uniform requirements for software development and documentation." It was released Nov. 8, 1994, and replaced DOD-STD-2167A, DOD-STD-7935A, and DOD-STD-1703. It was meant as an interim standard, to be in effect for about two years until a commercial standard was developed.

Unlike previous efforts like the seminal "2167A" which was mainly focused on the risky new area of software development, "498" was the first attempt at a truly comprehensive description of the system level life-cycle. It was the baseline that all of the ISO, IEEE, and related efforts after it replaced. It also contains much of the material that the subsequent professionalization of project management covered in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). The document "MIL-STD-498 Overview and Tailoring Guidebook" is 98 pages. The "MIL-STD-498 Application and Reference Guidebook" is 516 pages. And then there were the document templates, or Data Item Descriptions, described below, bringing documentation and process order that could scale to projects of the size humans were then conducting (aircraft, battleships, canals, dams, factories, satellites, submarines, etc.).

It was one of the few military standards that survived the "Perry Memo", then U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry's 1994 memorandum commanding the discontinuation of defense standards. However, it was canceled on May 27, 1998 and replaced by the essentially identical demilitarized version EIA J-STD-016 as an process example guide for IEEE 12207. Several programs outside of the U.S. military continued to use the standard due to familiarity and perceived advantages over alternative standards, such as free availability of the standards documents and presence of process detail including contractually-usable Data Item Descriptions.

Read more about MIL-STD-498:  Data Item Descriptions