Tailoring for Industrial Use
Robert S. Oshana · 1998
aytheon Systems Company, a defense electronics firm, typifies many US Defense Department environments in its strong, process-oriented development strategy. The company has been actively engaged in software process improvement at the organizational and project levels for over a decade. Raytheon bases its efforts on the Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model, and our segment of the company has been formally assessed at level 3 (defined). The project I’m involved with is a real-time embedded software application using a heterogeneous computer architecture: a single-board PowerPC using Ada for embedded command and control, and digital signal processors running applications written in C. There are significant real-time constraints within the signal processing application. To meet competitive pressures, the project’s management team sought strategies to improve productivity and increase the quality of the software we deliver to our system integration and test lab. The most important consideration was the need for high-quality, low-defect software that would require little or no rework. Raytheon chose our project to pilot a CMM level 4 (managing) and 5 (optimizing) environment. We are now implementing the respective key process areas—including components of continuous process improvement, process optimization, and process measurement and analysis. The project follows a tailored version of DoD STD-2167A and MIL-STD-498 documentation standards, and is built upon an Integrated Product Team structure. IPTs are management processes that integrate R As with any other methodology , a cer t ain degr e e of tailoring is re quir e d for a Cleanr o om appr o ach to be most effective in soft war e engineering . We have done so based on pr o ject needs, cost and schedule constraints, a nd comfor t level. T he re sult is an effective model for developing qualit y soft war e, e specially in the ar e as of r e quir e ments analysis and specifications development.