Software Engineering Institute

This report addresses technical and administrative issues associated with the system warranty process, and recommends a straightforward, two-page generic system warranty clause that covers software, not in isolation, but as part of a warranted system. The report describes one approach to relieving problems of system failure, and addresses legal, technical, and administrative issues that support warranty enforcement. The goal is to ease the government's burden of proving the existence of a defect for which the warranty clause provides a remedy. The key to satisfying that goal is to develop technical tests and specifications that provide objective and demonstrable standards against which a claim for breach of warranty can be measured.