This document established "uniform requirements for the software development that are applicable throughout the system life cycle.
On December 5, 1994 it was superseded by MIL-STD-498, which merged DOD-STD-2167A, DOD-STD-7935A, and DOD-STD-2168 into a single document,[4] and addressed some vendor criticisms.
Although the document states "the contractor is responsible for selecting software development methods (for example, rapid prototyping)", it also required "formal reviews and audits" that seemed to lock the vendor into designing and documenting the system before any implementation began.
[citation needed] Another criticism was the focus on design documents, to the exclusion of Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools being used in the industry.
Vendors would often use the CASE tools to design the software, then write several standards-required documents to describe the CASE-formatted data.