Software process improvement is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Through our practice-based approach, we give your organization the ability to focus on and change only what’s needed—retaining those parts of your existing process or approach that are serving you well. Our practices provide packaged solutions to specific software-development problems. Use them one by one or in any combination required to suit the needs of your organization or project.
Evolve your way of working
Essential Unified Process (EssUP) is very different from other processes or methods in the way it is presented. Important to EssUP is the idea of ‘separation of concerns’ or aspect-oriented thinking. Separation of concerns makes it simpler and more intuitive to put together a software process tailored to your needs. With separation of concerns, each software development practice is kept separate from other practices. Select the ones you want and combine them—with each other and within your existing process. Knowledge of every IJI practice is described on sets of cards that break down clearly the steps you need to take— identifying things to do, things to produce, and the competencies required. This allows your teams to focus on specific project pain points and implement only the priority practices that will produce results quickly. The flexibility of our practices gives you the freedom to establish the level of formality that best suits your project.
Changing the concept of ‘process’
Good practices make process implicit. Every process can be considered a collection of typically tangled and tightly coupled practices. Once existing practices are separated, methodologists can focus on capturing best practices in reusable and extensible formats without repeating or replacing existing practices. Treating processes as collections of practices introduces a fundamental change: instead of learning or adopting an entire process, practitioners learn about individual practices and adopt them incrementally to improve their ways of working. First, select the most appropriate practices to address your needs and cope with the challenges of your current situation. Then, implement the necessary practices in whatever combination and at whatever speed suits you. Importantly, you can add new practices to your existing way of work without changing everything or throwing away the practices you already know and depend on.