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This project will be driven by the real
evolution problems faced by partners.
Representative applications will be used to test
the project results against application
requirements. Application partners will apply the
technical results to real problems in parallel with
normal development and will thus access their
strengths, weaknesses and commercial viability.
This evaluation will be carefully planned during
the first year of the project and will be based on
the identification of specific problems by the
application partners. During that planning,
application partners will use their normal
management processes to estimate the cost,
resources and calendar time required to complete
the planned work without the use of the
RENAISSANCE results. We will also measure the
actual costs, resources and time required during
the evaluation and will compare these with this
baseline.
An important success criteria for the
RENAISSANCE method is its contribution to process
improvement in the application partners. Although
partners have well-defined development processes,
their evolution processes are more informal. The
RENAISSANCE method will contribute to the
definition of a more structured process (in
SEI terms, the process will increase its
maturity level) and hence should lead to
repeatable evolution processes.
Any method must exhibit certain attributes if it
is to be commercially successful. These attributes
and the ways in which we plan to assess them are as
follows:
- Generality. Can the
method be used for a range of different types of
system with different implementation
technologies? We will assess this by
applying the method to example applications
written in different programming languages,
including 4GLs.
- Usability. Can the method be
learned and applied without undue
expense? We will provide the application
partners with initial training and they will
apply the method to their own problems. We will
gather feedback on their experiences with the
method.
- Scalability. Can the
method be applied successfully to different
sizes of system? The method will be applied
to applications ranging from several thousand to
over a million lines of code.
- Adaptability. Can the
method be adapted depending on individual
circumstances, processes and standards. Again,
we will be able to make some assessment of this
because of the range of different trial
applications which are part of the project.
- Supportability. Can the
method be supported by using a range of
different CASE tools, re-engineering tools, etc.
The application partners use different toolsets
in their work and will assess whether adaptions
to use the specific features of these toolsets
are possible.
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