The Incremental Commitment Spiral Model: Principles and Practices for Successful Systems and Software

The Incremental Commitment Spiral Model: Principles and Practices for Successful Systems and Software

Released June 2014
Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
ISBN: 9780132882965

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Book description

“The title makes a huge promise: a way to divide commitment into increments that are both meetable (good news for developers) and meaningful (good news for managers and stakeholders). And the book makes good on that promise.”

–Tom DeMarco, Principal, The Atlantic Systems Guild, author of Peopleware, Deadline, and Slack

“I am seriously impressed with this ICSM book. Besides being conceptually sound, I was amazed by the sheer number of clear and concise characterizations of issues, relationships, and solutions. I wanted to take a yellow highlighter to it until I realized I’d be highlighting most of the book.”

–Curt Hibbs, Chief Agile Evangelist, Boeing

Use the ICSM to Generate and Evolve Your Life-Cycle Process Assets to Best Fit Your Organization’s Diverse and Changing Needs

Many systems development practitioners find traditional “one-size-fits-all” processes inadequate for the growing complexity, diversity, dynamism, and assurance needs of their products and services. The Incremental Commitment Spiral Model (ICSM) responds with a principle- and risk-based framework for defining and evolving your project and corporate process assets, avoiding pitfalls and disruption, and leveraging opportunities to increase value.

This book explains ICSM’s framework of decision criteria and principles, and shows how to apply them through relevant examples. It demonstrates ICSM’s potential for reducing rework and technical debt, improving maintainability, handling emergent requirements, and raising assurance levels.

Its coverage includes

  • What makes a system development successful

  • ICSM’s goals, principles, and usage as a process-generation framework

  • Creating and evolving processes to match your risks and opportunities

  • Integrating your current practices and adopting ICSM concepts incrementally, focusing on your greatest needs and opportunities

    • About the Website: Download the evolving ICSM guidelines, subprocesses, templates, tools, white papers, and academic support resources at csse.usc.edu/ICSM.

    Table of contents

    1. Inside Front Cover
    2. About This eBook
    3. Title Page
    4. Copyright Page
    5. Praise for The Incremental Commitment Spiral Model
    6. Contents
    7. Foreword
    8. Preface
      1. Who Can Benefit from Reading This Book?
    9. About the Authors
    10. Prologue
      1. A Cautionary Tale: The Bed of Procrustes
      2. The Point of the Story
    11. 0. Introduction
      1. 0.1 A World of Change
      2. 0.2 Creating Successful 21st-Century Systems
      3. 0.3 ICSM Distilled
      4. 0.4 Using the ICSM
      5. 0.5 Incremental ICSM Adoption Approaches
      6. 0.6 Examples of ICSM Use
      7. 0.7 How ICSM Might Have Helped a Complex Government Acquisition (healthcare.gov)
      8. References
    12. Part I: The Four ICSM Principles
      1. 1. The First Principle: Stakeholder Value-Based Guidance
        1. 1.1 Failure Story: The Too-Good Road Surface Assessment Robot
        2. 1.2 Success Story: The Hospira Next-Generation Intravenous Medical Pump
        3. 1.3 The Fundamental System Success Theorem and Its Implications
        4. 1.4 The System Success Realization Theorem and Its Implications
        5. References
      2. 2. The Second Principle: Incremental Commitment and Accountability
        1. 2.1 A Failed Total-Commitment Project: Bank of America’s MasterNet
        2. 2.2 A Successful Incremental-Commitment Project: The TRW Software Productivity System
        3. 2.3 The Two Cones of Uncertainty and the ICSM Stages I and II
        4. 2.4 Alternative Incremental and Evolutionary Development Models
        5. 2.5 Development as C2ISR
        6. References
      3. 3. The Third Principle: Concurrent Multidiscipline Engineering
        1. 3.1 Failure Story: Sequential RPV Systems Engineering and Development
        2. 3.2 Success Story: Concurrent Competitive-Prototyping RPV Systems Development
        3. 3.3 Concurrent Development and Evolution Engineering
        4. 3.4 Concurrent Engineering of Hardware, Software, and Human Factors Aspects
        5. 3.5 Concurrent Requirements and Solutions Engineering
        6. References
      4. 4. The Fourth Principle: Evidence- and Risk-Based Decisions
        1. 4.1 Failure Story: The Unaffordable Requirement
        2. 4.2 Success Story: CCPDS-R
        3. 4.3 Feasibility Evidence as a First-Class Deliverable
        4. 4.4 How Much of Anything Is Enough?
        5. 4.5 Summing Up the Principles
        6. References
    13. Part II: ICSM Life Cycle and Stage I: Incremental Definition
      1. 5. The ICSM Life Cycle
        1. 5.1 ICSM Life Cycle
        2. 5.2 Comparison of ICSM to Other Life-Cycle Models
        3. 5.3 Stage I: Deciding Why, What, When, Who, Where, How, and How Much
        4. 5.4 ICSM Case Study
      2. 6. Exploration Phase
        1. 6.1 What Is the Exploration Phase?
        2. 6.2 What Are the Potential Pitfalls during Exploration?
        3. 6.3 Potential Major Risks to Watch for at the End of Exploration
        4. 6.4 How Exploration Scales from Small to Large, Complex Systems
        5. 6.5 Role of Principles in Exploration Activities
        6. 6.6 Exploration for the MedFRS Initiative
      3. 7. Valuation Phase
        1. 7.1 What Is the Valuation Phase?
        2. 7.2 What Are the Potential Pitfalls during Valuation?
        3. 7.3 Major Risks to Watch for at End of Valuation
        4. 7.4 How Valuation Scales from Small to Large, Complex Systems
        5. 7.5 Role of Principles in Valuation Activities
        6. 7.6 Valuation for the MedFRS Initiative
      4. 8. Foundations Phase
        1. 8.1 What Is the Foundations Phase?
        2. 8.2 What Are the Potential Pitfalls during Foundations?
        3. 8.3 Major Risks to Watch for at the End of Foundations
        4. 8.4 How Foundations Effort Scales from Small to Large, Complex Systems
        5. 8.5 Role of Principles in Foundations Activities
        6. 8.6 Foundations for the MedFRS System of Systems
        7. 8.7 Stage I Summary
        8. Reference
    14. Part III: Stage II: Incremental Development and Evolution
      1. 9. Development Phase
        1. 9.1 What Is the Development Phase?
        2. 9.2 Ready to Release?
        3. 9.3 What Are the Potential Pitfalls during Development?
        4. 9.4 Major Risks to Watch for during Development
        5. 9.5 How Development Scales from Small to Large, Complex Systems
        6. 9.6 Role of Principles in Development Activities
        7. 9.7 MedFRS Development
        8. Reference
      2. 10. System Production and Operations
        1. 10.1 What Is “Production”?
        2. 10.2 What Are the Potential Pitfalls during Production?
        3. 10.3 Major Risks to Watch for during Production
        4. 10.4 What Is the Systems Operations Phase?
        5. 10.5 What Are the Potential Pitfalls during Operations?
        6. 10.6 Major Risks to Watch for during Operations
        7. 10.7 Production and Operations for the MedFRS Initiative
        8. 10.8 Stage II Summary
    15. Part IV: Applying ICSM to Your Organization
      1. 11. ICSM Patterns and Common Cases
        1. 11.1 ICSM Patterns
        2. 11.2 ICSM Common Cases
        3. 11.3 Common Case Examples
        4. 11.4 Summary: The ICSM Common Cases Overview
        5. References
      2. 12. ICSM and Your Organization
        1. 12.1 Leveraging Your Current Process Investments
        2. 12.2 Maximizing the Value of Your Organizational Knowledge
        3. 12.3 Where the Impact Is
        4. References
      3. 13. Evidence-Based Life-Cycle Management
        1. 13.1 Motivation and Context
        2. 13.2 Commitment Review Process Overview
        3. 13.3 Feasibility Evidence Description Development Process
        4. 13.4 Evaluation Framework for the FED
        5. 13.5 Example of Use
        6. 13.6 Applicability Outside ICSM
        7. References
      4. 14. Cost and Schedule Evidence Development
        1. 14.1 A Review of Primary Methods for Cost and Schedule Estimation
        2. 14.2 Estimations and the ICSM
        3. 14.3 The Bottom Line
        4. References
      5. 15. Risk–Opportunity Assessment and Control
        1. 15.1 The Duality of Risks and Opportunities
        2. 15.2 Fundamentals of Risk-Opportunity Management
        3. 15.3 Risk Management within ICSM
        4. 15.4 Risk and Opportunity Management Tools
        5. 15.5 Using Risk to Determine How Much Evidence Is Enough
        6. References
    16. Afterword
      1. ICSM Evolution
      2. On the Horizon
    17. Appendix A. Evidence Evaluation Framework
      1. Goal 1: Concurrent Definition of System Requirements and Solutions
      2. Goal 2: System Life-Cycle Organization, Planning, and Staffing
      3. Goal 3: Technology Maturing and Architecting
      4. Goal 4: Evidence-Based Progress Monitoring and Commitment Reviews
    18. Appendix B. Mapping between ICSM and Other Standards
    19. Appendix C. A Value-Based Theory of Systems Engineering
      1. Introduction
      2. A Value-Based Theory of Systems Engineering (VBTSE)
      3. Using and Testing the VBTSE: Process Framework and Example
      4. VBSE Theory Evaluation with Respect to Goodness Criteria
      5. Conclusions and Areas for Further Research
      6. Acknowledgments
      7. References
    20. Index
    21. Inside Back Cover

    Product information

    • Title: The Incremental Commitment Spiral Model: Principles and Practices for Successful Systems and Software
    • Author(s):
    • Release date: June 2014
    • Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional
    • ISBN: 9780132882965