ISO/IEC 12207 was published on 1 August 1995 and is the first international standard to provide a comprehensive set of life cycle processes, activities and tasks for software that is part of a larger system, stand alone software product, and software services. The standard provides common software process architecture for the acquisition, supply, development, operation and maintenance of software. The standard also provides the necessary supporting processes, activities and tasks, and organizational processes, activities and tasks for managing and improving the processes.

This Amendment provides an interim revision to ISO/IEC 12207 that establishes a co-ordinated set of software process information that can be used for process definition and process assessment and improvement. The Amendment accommodates the requirements of current and developing SC 7 standards and technical reports, notably ISO/IEC 12207 and ISO/IEC/TR 15504, and considers other standards, e.g., ISO/IEC 14598 and ISO/IEC 15939. Experience in using ISO/IEC 12207 as the basis for organizations' software life cycle process and in two-party situations, has resulted in some lessons learned and has provided some valuable inputs to the update process.