A quality-assured hierarchical model for solution development and delivery management

There are five issues with current software development process practice that hinder the delivery of useful, quality products: limited scope of the development process; linearity in models; process emphasis; project-level management; and the treatment and practice of quality and metrics separately (for the most part) from the development models. To address the issue of the scope of the conventional development process, which covers only the requirement phase through the production phase, we expand the conventional models to include two additional processes: business opportunity at the front end and market acceptance and penetration at the back end. These are collectively called solution development and delivery. The term solution is used to reflect goal-driven development, and the separation between development and delivery reflects reality. In response to the issue of linearity in models, we introduce a hierarchical model for solution development and delivery management, which is pulled up from the linear models, essentially goal-driven and indicator-based. The hierarchical model is mappable to the structural, functional and cross-functional development organization.