ISO 9126

Wikipedia

I discovered this by accident, and don't know what to make of it.

The fundamental objective of the ISO/IEC 9126 standard is to address some of the well known human biases that can adversely affect the delivery and perception of a software development project. These biases include changing priorities after the start of a project or not having any clear definitions of "success". By clarifying, then agreeing on the project priorities and subsequently converting abstract priorities (compliance) to measurable values (output data can be validated against schema X with zero intervention), ISO/IEC 9126 tries to develop a common understanding of the project's objectives and goals.

This is about projects, something discovered in WWII, and used ever since - usually by self-appointed project managers. who have no idea what they are doing.

Its different criteria are ililties - Analysability,  Changeability, Testability, Stabililty, and so on.

In my twenty years in the Computer Industry (1980-2000) I never saw this used. But all of the companies I worked for went out of business - so perhaps it is being used by the survivors - Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft. But even here, it is not used very much.

The usual focus is on stock price, not product quality. Upper Management assumes (correctly) that the stockholders have no idea what is going on, and can be easily managed.