User focused object oriented software engineering practice

Ziel

The growing complexity of business and its impact on software engineering make it necessary to gather requirements more accurate and to transform them to software (business objects) in a traceable way. Otherwise projects easily run out of time and budget or fail to deliver the requested product.
With UFOSEP (User Focused Object-Oriented Software Engineering Process) we are able to register/transfer user requests more efficiently. The customers should get higher quality products in a shorter period.
Development is done iteratively to allow for the controlled reworking of parts of a system to remove mistakes or to make improvements based on user feedback as early as possible. This shorter, iterative process life cycle requires a reduction of the overhead to release software.

THE EXPERIMENT

A new use case driven and iterative SEP - will be experimentally introduced at AXIOMA. The important questions concerning the risks of integrating the new design with the existing implementation sub process as well as introducing a better support for the iterative process are answered. The method will be supported by an upper case tool and a configuration management tool. To achieve the objectives above the following activities are set:

1. Rumbaughs OMT, Jacobsons OOSE, prototyping and ISO-9000 are merged to UFOSEP, a new user focused object-oriented method. Software engineers of the baseline project are trained.
2. In a second step UFOSEP supported by an upper CASE tool (Select OMT or Cadre ObjectTeam) is used for analysis and design of the baseline project.
3. The new design and the current implementation sub processes are integrated. The transformation of design deliverables into input for code generation by our internal lower CASE tool is partially automated to be able to estimate the benefits and costs of a full integration.
4. The iterative process is supported better by the use of a CVM tool which reduces the overhead of releasing versions (prototypes, beta and final) to the customer.

The baseline application is one increment from an integrated security trading, position keeping, settlement and accounting system.

AXIOMA employs 25 people. 9 of them are directly or indirectly involved in the PIE.

EXPECTED IMPACT AND EXPERIENCE

1) Through the use case driven software development process, AXIOMA awaits to get more customer orders thanks to the reached high quality reputation. This is the basis for raising the employment; planned: 25% per year till AXIOMA has reached the desired size of 100 persons.
2) Further projects make profit by cost reductions of 20% through the fact that changes can be made with much less expenses before the implementation sub process. 90% of AXIOMA's current turnover is created by projects. So this expected improvement is a key factor for the future success of the company.
3) With the prospect that it is possible to create new software releases very quickly and with less overhead, the iterative process can take place in all projects. Beside that, it's a first preparation step from a project to a product development process.

If the experiment is successful we will introduce UFOSEP to the whole company. Further improvements are planed in the domains of project, risk and quality management.

Wissenschaftliches Gebiet

Programm/Programme

FP4-ESSI 2 - Software Best Practice initiative within the framework of the specific research and technological development programme in the field of Information Technologies, 1994-1998

Thema/Themen

1.28 - Process Improvement Experiments

Aufforderung zur Vorschlagseinreichung

Data not available

Finanzierungsplan

ACM - Preparatory, accompanying and support measures

Koordinator

Axioma Information Systems Gesmbh

EU-Beitrag

Keine Daten

Adresse

Scharitzerstrabe 12
A-4020 Linz
Österreich

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