Competing in Large-Scale Software Development

This paper provides an overview to the theme of this issue, the software-development process; i.e., the integration of practices, technology, and platforms into an environment for the development of software products. With a well-defined software-development process, an organization can optimize its development intervals, minimize costs, and maximize performance. In this paper, we describe the work going on in some AT&T business units to define and improve the process of software development and, thereby, shorten the time to market for products and improve product quality. In particular, we focus on two projects that provide mechanisms organizations can use to achieve and measure improvement in their software-development processes. These mechanisms emphasize the process and its components. By using these mechanisms, a software-development organization can choose the most appropriate practices, technology, and platforms to support its processes and measure the results of using these choices. Thus, the organization can quickly become process focused and reap the benefits of this approach to software development.