Problematic

Software and system development processes change regularly in organizations because they must constantly be adapted. A new system version, a new technology, a change in the organization, or a new company strategic priority may all lead to changes in processes.

These processes are often numerous, complex, and above all interdependent. The smallest change can have a "house of cards" effect. One hasty change and all the best practices can be disturbed.

Sustainability will be the key issue in the future. During implementation of a model within an organization, application and evolution costs are confused. Process application cannot be perennial unless the system for this can be provided at a lower cost with appropriate tools.

Improvement approach

A company that wants to improve its control of software and system development processes usually uses models such as CMM/CMMI (Capability Maturity Model) from SEI (Software Engineering Institute), or ISO 15 504 (SPICE).

These models offer a process-oriented work organization and allow companies to move to higher levels of maturity.

Undertaking an improvement approach means that process improvement must be constantly sought. But as we said, the processes are numerous and complex. The SEI CMMI identifies 25 process domains (ISO has 40), broken down into 87 "technical objectives", which are in turn broken down into 485 practices. And we are not counting here the documents produced, the data, tools or the measurements made. It is therefore practically impossible to control the changes without a specialized system.

Improvement system

Spirula Modeler is a comprehensive solution for the modelling of processes for the development of software and systems for companies.

The Spirula Modeler solution contributes to companies' agility by providing them with effective means for:

• Designing, modelling and distributing your software development processes
• Evaluating the correspondence to the chosen model (CMM;CMMI; Spice) during the design of the process
• Identifying the work products that can be taken as direct or indirect "artifacts" as of the process design
• Capitalizing on and transferring best practices and controlling changes
   

Modelling gives a clear view of the people involved, documents and activities

Thanks to Spirula Modeler, each employee can access all of the good development practices defined by his company on the intranet. Spirula Modeler is a comprehensive, proven process modelling approach and above all an excellent accelerator for your improvement approaches.

Your processes are changing: a new tool in the software development chain (or simply a change of version), a new organization (externalization of development, tests or others), Spirula Modeler facilitates the impact analysis:

• Which diagrams is the "Project Planning" document involved in?

 

• By which process is the "Project Planning" document used?

 

Spirula Modeler can also reference the levels of correspondence between the institutionalized process and the practices of the model:

Evaluation during the design of your process
of the correspondence to the model via a traceability matrix

By facilitating the analyses of the impact and traceability of the correspondence between the processes and the model, Spirula Modeler ensures the continuity of your methodological investments.

The documents to constitute artifacts can be referenced. This information will be an excellent accelerator for future evaluations:

A clear view of the situation allows us to establish an improvement action plan:

A clear situation, a defined target… each shares the same vision….