Standards foundation for the Top Gun Design College

The paper describes the successful use of DOD-STD-2167A elements, adapted for industrial use, in the training of the best software designers in a leading telecommunications company. The standards were used as the bridge between different technical cultures of different groups of designers, and provided significant return on investment. The adaptation started by recognizing that a commercial organization in general offers a multitude of products and services to the market, that they all belong to one or more domains, and that they (can) correspond to software configuration items. The Top Gun Design College was built by providing appropriate requirements specifications for college case studies. Each specification has a domain model, service specification, system specification, specifications of interfaces, and specifications of (software and other) configuration items. Case studies corresponded to real life projects. Both the real life projects and college exercises involved a multitude of methods and paradigms.