This section presents the objectives of the ING software engineering programme and outlines its use of standards. These software standards, or more accurately codes of practice, are intended for use by ING staff and external groups supplying software for use by ING. It is understood that many regard standards of any sort as a bureaucratic hinderance to getting a job done. The ING codes of practice are a minimal set of guidelines which attempt to advise developers and maintainers of practices which will lead to cost-effective software systems. These standards are informal and intended to keep prescriptive content to a minimum. The codes of practice are also intended to be applicable to the wide variety of software projects resulting in operational systems at ING.
ING has a clear responsibility to provide up-to-date systems for use by the astronomical community in the most cost-effective and timely way. To do this requires the optimization of the cost of engineering projects over the entirety of the project lifecycle; development, delivery and maintenance. It may seem that the timely delivery of systems to ING can conflict with the objective of reducing costs, at least during the development phase of a project. However, an organised and cooperative approach to engineering practice, i.e. the mutual use of codes of practice in some form, is the mechanism by which this conflict can be avoided.
These software codes of practice are intended to improve the cost-effectiveness of the software engineering programme at ING by continuously improving the quality of software systems in use. In particular, they are intended to improve the uniformity of software systems; enable tools to be provided for speeding up the development and transfer phases of the software lifecycle; and reduce maintenance costs.
The remainder of this document describes the preferred approach to software development for ING and the currently preferred systems, software and hardware (where applicable), to be used by developers. These preferred systems are bound to change with time by virtue of technological changes and the long-term technological strategy of ING. For specific projects pragmatism demands that ``everything is negotiable'' - if in specific cases a departure from these recommendations is justifiable, then there is a good basis for negotiation with ING.