Which one of the following ISO standards is used for the software process?

The ISO 9000 series is a family of quality-management-system (QMS) standards. Because a single generic QMS document cannot describe how to run every kind of production or development activity, ISO also publishes narrower guideline parts within the 9000 series, each part explaining how the general QMS requirements should be applied to one specific class of product or process.

• ISO 9000 lays out the shared concepts, principles, and vocabulary of the whole quality-management family; it is a foundational reference rather than activity-specific guidance.

• ISO 9001 specifies the generic requirements a quality management system must satisfy, written to apply uniformly across any organisation or product category.

• ISO 9003 gave the quality-assurance model for final inspection and testing, one closing verification stage of a QMS, not guidance for a full development activity.

• ISO 9000-3 is the guideline part of the 9000 series written to adapt the family's general QMS requirements to the development, supply, and maintenance activities of a specific product category, precisely the software process the question asks about.

ISO's own standards catalogue records ISO 9000-3 as the guidance document for applying ISO 9001 to computer software development, supply, and maintenance, a scope that directly matches "software process" in the stem, while ISO 9000, ISO 9001, and ISO 9003 each describe a different, non-software-specific aspect of a quality management system. It was later reissued with the same scope as ISO/IEC 90003.

Hence, the ISO standard used for the software process is ISO 9000-3.