EPRAM: A Risk Analysis and Mitigation-Based Evolutionary Prototyping Model for Quality Requirements Development.

Abstract

Evolutionary prototyping focuses on the iteration of software planning, implementation, and evaluation while gathering a correct and consistent set of requirements. The process lends particular strength to building quality software due, in part, to the ongoing clarification of existing requirements and the discovery of previously missing or unknown requirements. Traditionally, however, the iterative reexamination of a system's requirements has not been the panacea that practitioners sought due to the predisposition for requirements creep and the difficulty in managing it. This thesis describes the use of evolutionary prototyping in conjunction with an aggressive risk-mitigation strategy. Together, these techniques support successful requirement discovery and clarification and guard against the negative effects of requirements creep; an aspect that general evolutionary prototyping methodologies have not mastered. These techniques are embodied in a comprehensive software development model, which has been christened as the EPRAM (Evolutionary Prototyping with Risk Analysis and Mitigation) model. To ensure that quality is inherent within this process model, the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) was tailored to conform to the development environments of small teams, projects, and organizations and was used as a mature base upon which to build the model. The model was intentionally designed to comply with the Level 2 Key Process Areas (KPA) of the CMM. Validation of the EPRAM model has occurred on several software development efforts employing the model to support the rapid development of electronic commerce applications.