Software Production: From Art/Craft to Engineering

Abstract

Software‐development organizations throughout industry are striving for better ways to develop, deploy, and maintain their products. Changing an organization's well‐established operating procedures—to improved methods and techniques—is always a substantial challenge. But, quite often, change is crucial for maintaining competitiveness and ensuring long‐term success. This paper analyzes the challenge, and identifies key elements of a typical migration path to creating a new operating paradigm. The paper also provides a framework for technology insertion, a methodology that helps develop a disciplined engineering process, allowing software projects to advance systematically in their journey to success. Experience with the AT&T mosaic of integrated software processes, known as MOSAIC, and the software‐development environment (SDE), shows how MOSAIC and SDE support project teams undergoing organizational change. © 1994 AT&T Technical Journal