New processes for new horizons: the incremental commitment model

The wide variety of software-intensive systems needed to support the new horizons of evolving technology, system and software complexity, high dependability, global interoperability, emergent requirements, and adaptability to rapid change make traditional and current one-size-fits-all process models infeasible. This tutorial presents the process framework, principles, practices, and case studies for a new model developed and being used to address these challenges. It has a series of risk-driven decision points that enable projects to converge on whatever combination of agile, plan-driven, formal, legacy-oriented, reuse-oriented, or adaptive processes that best fit a project's situation. The tutorial discusses the decision table for common special cases; exit ramps for terminating non-viable projects; support of concurrent engineering of requirements, solutions and plans; and evidence-based commitment milestones for synchronizing the concurrent engineering. The tutorial will include case studies and exercises for participants' practice and discussion.