Preface Standards development within the Information Technology sector is harmonized with international standards development. Through the CSA Technical Committee on Information Technology (TCIT), Canadians serve as the SCC Mirror Committee (SMC) on ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 on Information Technology (ISO/IEC JTC1) for the Standards Council of Canada (SCC), the ISO member body for Canada and sponsor of the Canadian National Committee of the IEC. Also, as a member of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Canada participates in the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (ITU-T). For brevity, this Standard will be referred to as "CAN/CSA-ISO/IEC 26555" throughout. At the time of publication, ISO/IEC 26555:2015 is available from ISO and IEC in English only. CSA Group will publish the French version when it becomes available from ISO and IEC. Scope This International Standard deals with the tools and methods of technical management for software products, software services, software-intensive systems (including System Architecture and excluding hardware) within a product line. The scope of this International Standard is as follows: Enable the users of this standard to holistically understand, adopt, and enact the processes, tools, and methods for product line technical management. In addition, this International Standard helps the users evaluate and select relevant tools and methods based on business and user-related criteria. Help product line engineers, developers, and tool vendors become informed about capabilities of tools and methods that are required for supporting product line implementation from technical aspects. Provide product line-specific processes and capabilities of tools and methods in technical management. This International Standard does not concern processes and capabilities of tools and methods for technical management for a one-of-a-kind system but rather deals with those belonging to a family of systems. NOTE System Architecture is a set of logical and physical principles used to achieve a mission within a given environment. From System Architecture are derived components that can be subsystems, software products, human-based products like crew or operators or hardware product like mechanical structures, electronic boards, chemicals, etc. The scope of the International Standard spans from the system, to sub-systems, and software products. Other types of components and especially those related to human beings and to hardware parts are not within the scope of this International Standard.