PROFES 2024
Mon 2 - Wed 4 December 2024 Tartu, Estonia

Ensuring compliance with industry standards and regulations is a critical challenge in software and systems engineering, particularly in domains such as automotive or aerospace in which adherence to standards is mandatory. Compliance checking is often manually connected, e.g., through reviews based on project-specific rules, which is a costly process. This paper proposes a structured, tool-supported approach to compliance analysis. The proposed approach is based on providing a computable reference model, which lays the foundation for the tailoring of project-specific processes, and an automated analysis of the degree of implemented compliance-relevant activities. A proof of concept was is presented, which includes the development of an ECSS-based reference model for software systems engineering, which was developed in close collaboration with practitioners from the aerospace domain. Based on this reference model, the process management tool Stages was used to provide means to generate assessments and action plans. To demonstrate the concept, an exemplary systems development process was modeled and analyzed, which allowed us to identify missing elements in the planed project activities.