ResDevOps: A Software Engineering Framework for Achieving Long-Lasting Complex Systems

The development of high quality complex software systems and quick time-to-market with full customer satisfaction often appear as two competing forces. Many industry efforts have been directed towards agile methodologies completed with the DevOps approach, whereas traditional requirements engineering with much documentation, is considered surpassed. The aim is to obtain a longer life software because it suddenly responds to the customers changing requirements from which it receives continuous input. This might create a serious cost implication and a real risk to lose system requirements control. In this paper, we propose a framework able to govern the complexity of the system requirements and to allow the embedding, occasionally, of technological innovations into the overall system. ResDevOps joins the value of the agile world with DevOps, with the additional value deriving from an unceasing parallel innovation management process, which we call ResDevs. ResDevOps includes a continuous research and innovation process, which provides an asynchronous, additional input to the agile process inside a chain of concurrent engineering collaboration. This is a suitable trade-off to maintain modern IT Systems live for a longer time, with many consequent advantages for both total investment and system quality. The practical use of the ResDevOps approach is shown by means of a case study.