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In 1994, the SAE G-11 Reliability, Maintainability, Supportability and Logistics (RMSL) Division chartered a software committee, G-11SW, to create several software standards and guidance documents across the RMSL spectrum, including a software reliability program standard and implementation guidelines. The committee was formed as a cross section of international representatives from commercial industries and governments. The G-11SW committee has developed a standard (JA1002) and these implementation guidelines (JA1003) that are consistent with a SAE G-11 system level reliability program standard (JA1000) and guidelines (JA1000-1), augmented by necessary software-specific information. The G-11SW committee believes these documents reflect the best current commercial practices, and meet the objectives of the United States Department of Defense Acquisition Reform initiative and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Reliability Program.

This Handbook provides “how to” guidance to industry and government for the reliability Activities and Methods contained in GEIASTD0009 for developing reliable products and systems, successfully demonstrating them during test and evaluation, and sustaining them throughout the system/product life cycle. GEIASTD0009 requires the developers and customer/users working as a team to plan and implement a reliability program that provides systems/products that satisfy the user’s requirements and expectations using a systems engineering approach. The four Objectives of GEIASTD0009 are listed below: Objective 1: Understand customer/user requirements and constraints. The team (developer, customer, and user) includes the Activities necessary to ensure that the user’s requirements and product needs are fully understood and defined, so that a comprehensive design specification and Reliability program plan are generated. Objective 2: Design and redesign for reliability.

The importance of reliability in design engineering has significantly grown since the early 1960’s. Competition has been a primary driver in this growth. The three realities of competition today are: world class quality and reliability, cost-effectiveness, and fast time-to-market. Formerly, companies could effectively compete if they could achieve at least two of these features in their products and product development processes, often at the expense of the third. However, customers today, whether military, aerospace, or commercial, have been sensitized to a higher level of expectation and demand products that are highly reliable, yet affordable. Product development practices are shifting in response to this higher level of expectation. Today, there is seldom time, or necessary resources to extensively test, analyze, and fix to achieve high quality and reliability.

This document provides methods and techniques for implementing a reliability program throughout the full life cycle of a software product, whether the product is considered as standalone or part of a system. This document is the companion to the Software Reliability Program Standard [JA1002]. The Standard describes the requirements of a software reliability program to define, meet, and demonstrate assurance of software product reliability using a Plan-Case framework and implemented within the context of a system application. This document has general applicability to all sectors of industry and commerce and to all types of equipment whose functionality is to some degree implemented by software components. It is intended to be guidance for business purposes and should be applied when it provides a value-added basis for the business aspects of development, use, and sustainment of software whose reliability is an important performance parameter.

This standard requires the developers and customer/user’s working as a team to plan and implement a reliability program that provides systems/products that satisfy the user’s requirements and expectations. The user’s requirements and needs are expressed in the form of the following four reliability objectives: The developer shall solicit, investigate, analyze, understand and agree to the user’s requirements and product needs. The developer, working with the customer and user, shall include the activities necessary to ensure that the user’s requirements and product needs are fully understood and defined, so that a comprehensive design specification and Reliability Program Plan can be generated. The developer shall use well-defined reliability- and systems-engineering processes to develop, design, and verify that the system/product meets the user’s documented reliability requirements and needs.