ISO/IEC/IEEE 12207:2017 also provides processes that can be employed for defining, controlling, and improving software life cycle processes within an organization or a project.

The processes, activities, and tasks of this document can also be applied during the acquisition of a system that contains software, either alone or in conjunction with ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288:2015, Systems and software engineering System life cycle processes.

In the context of this document and ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288, there is a continuum of human-made systems from those that use little or no software to those in which software is the primary interest. It is rare to encounter a complex system without software, and all software systems require physical system components (hardware) to operate, either as part of the software system-of-interest or as an enabling system or infrastructure. Thus, the choice of whether to apply this document for the software life cycle processes, or ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288:2015, Systems and software engineering?System life cycle processes, depends on the system-of-interest. Processes in both documents have the same process purpose and process outcomes, but differ in activities and tasks to perform software engineering or systems engineering, respectively.