A Rational Design Process – It’s Time to Stop Faking It

The literature on Object-Oriented software development processes has proposed a lifecycle which is often found to be at odds with the established software engineering processes of organizations. In particular, more established software engineering processes at higher CMM (Capability Maturity Model) levels often have deep roots in the ‘Waterfall’ lifecycle Some of these mature processes might be evolving into legacy processes. The emerging Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) is more appropriate than the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) as a course of study for potential project managers of software projects. PMBOK has a tendency to emphasize scope management and task decomposition, while SWEBOK focus on requirements analysis and architectural design. Recent developments in Object-Oriented software engineering assert that an emphasis on requirements rather than scope, and on architecture rather than tasks leads to superior software development processes. Specifically, organizations should not demand detailed fixed scope, cost and schedule plans at the beginning of a significant software development effort. There is a lesson to be learn from the building industry, which allocates up to half of the overall development time to architectural design, and does not create a controlled project environment until the construction phase. When developing e-commerce applications, requirements analysis and system architecture remain critical, but they should be expanded to a broader context. The business plan replaces a project plan in ecommerce; marketing (and even sales) drive requirements analysis; and architectural design should be broadened to include infrastructure design. E-commerce system design encompasses system-wide issues, including hardware, networks, purchased components and partnerships, as well as interfaces with back-end fulfillment and collection capabilities.