ISIS Delivering Successful Solutions - Each and Every Time

ISIS: Delivering Successful SolutionsEach and Every TimeDecember 2009

ISIS: Delivering Successful SolutionsEach and Every Time

IBM ILOG Consulting Methodology White Paper (Version 19)

Jean Pommier, Jerome Boyer, Pierre Berlandier, Julio Perez Palmero, Maurice Schlumberger Application and Integration Middleware Software Services,IBM Software Group

ISIS: Delivering Successful SolutionsEach and Every TimePage 2

Contents

ISIS: The Way to Your Solution 2

Starting on the Right Track 2

Iterative Progress 2

Dont Reinvent the Wheel 3

What is the Unified Process? 3

Unified Process Architecture 5

What is ISIS? 6

Software Development Best Practices 8

Our Value Proposition 13

Learn More 14

ISIS: The Way to Your Solution

IBM ILOG Solution Implementation Standard (ISIS) is the methodology

used by IBM Consultants to deliver the value customers expect from IBM

ILOG software. ISIS builds on the Open Unified Process (OpenUP) to ensure

that every consulting engagement is consistently managed and executed.

OpenUP is an implementation of the Unified Process available through the

Eclipse Foundation. By optimizing the Eclipse Process Framework (EPF),

ISIS extends OpenUP to support the specific implementation requirements of

projects based on IBM ILOG technologies for optimization or business rule

management.

Starting on the Right Track

Getting started on the right track is the most important part of any project.

ISIS includes best practices in the form of step-by-step guidelines for

analysis, design and implementation to ensure your project benefits fully

from experience accumulated through hundreds of successful consulting

projects.

Iterative Progress

ISIS uses iterative development to minimize project risks and improve

productivity. The idea is to work toward the main project goal in discrete

steps, each intended to manage the next set of key risks and create the next

bit of functionality. This risk-oriented approach progresses in stages with

checkpoint gates between iterations to enable all the project stakeholders

project owners, users and technical staffto review the work and reach

common agreement before proceeding.


Dont Reinvent the Wheel

Why reinvent the wheel when our consultants already have the expertise

and resources you need from helping other companies implement similar

requirements? ISIS includes a repository of reusable designs, patterns and

components, as well as starter code and tools, that the consultants draw on in

working with clients.

With services ranging from application assessment, feasibility studies

and prototyping to turnkey application development and maintenance,

IBM experts support your entire project. The ISIS methodology adds

tremendous value to your projects while minimizing both technical and

project management risks. Reduced project risks mean better coverage of the

business requirements by the delivered solution and a better fit between the

need and the solution.

To fully understand what ISIS brings to the table, you need to understand

OpenUp, the core of the ISIS methodology framework.

What is the Unified Process?

The success of your project depends on applying the Unified Process (UP), a

well-defined and well-documented software development process. Invented

by Rational Software, promoted by IBM and used by the Eclipse Foundation

through OpenUP. UP is the de facto industry-standard process for software engineering. It provides a disciplined approach to assigning tasks and

responsibilities within a software development organization, and is aimed at

producing high-quality software that meets the needs of its users within a

predictable schedule and budget.


Highlights

OpenUP covers the entire life cycle of a

software development project, and guides the

development team through project management

and technical activities.

OpenUP is a comprehensive development methodology supported by a set of

design diagrams (the Unified Modeling Language (UML) notation), a set of

industry development best practices, a set of development tools, and a set of

guidelines, artifacts and templates.

OpenUP is a customizable process framework that can be adapted to the

different ways a company goes about performing software development.

ISIS uses a customized version of the OpenUP framework to provide a

well-defined development methodology specifically for business rule and

optimization projects.

OpenUP covers the entire life cycle of a software development project, and

guides the development team through project management and technical

activities. OpenUP also serves as a key source of knowledge by providing

an extensive collection of guidelines, templates, white papers, advice and

examples. ISIS extends this foundation framework by adding the production

phase of an application, thereby ensuring customers end-to-end support

when needed.

Figure 1: The two dimensions of ISIS based on OpenUP: Phases and Disciplines


Unified Process Architecture

The overall architecture of UP is illustrated in Figure 1. The vertical dimensionDisciplinesrepresents core software engineering activities.

The horizontal dimensionPhasesrepresents time and shows the life-cycle

aspects of the process as it unfolds.

The first four phases cover the development part of a project:

Inception Phase: During the first phase, project stakeholders define the scope of the project and its business case. These are codified as UML use-case diagrams to determine system

requirements. At the end of this phase, all the stakeholders need to agree on the scope defini-

tion and cost and schedule estimates. If the project fails to pass this phase, it will be canceled or

significantly changed.

Elaboration Phase: In this phase, team members analyze the projects needs in detail and define its architectural foundation using the scope definition from the first phase. To accomplish

these objectives, members must have a deep understanding of the entire system. This phase is

critical because upon its completion, most of the systems functionality and architecture has to be

established.

Construction Phase: During this phase, the software is designed, built and tested in itera-tive cycles. Developers frequently consult with management and customers to get feedback. At the

end of the Construction Phase, the system should be ready to be released.

Transition Phase: In the last phase of development, the software product is distributed to the user community. The users need to be trained to use the product, and new business processes

often need to be rolled out. At this point, feedback from the users drives a new set of requirements

and the systems long-term life cycle is put into place.


Highlights

ISIS is a tailored version of OpenUP for business

rule and optimization projects. It greatly

enhances the IBM ability to consistently provide

great quality, and deliver projects on time and

within budget.

The fifth phase occurs after the system is deployed and addresses the

ongoing support and operation of the application:

Production Phase: Two key application support activities take place during this phase. The first is application maintenance, during which potential defects are corrected. The second, which runs in parallel and depends upon the nature of the application, is the implementation of

changes corresponding to the evolution of the requirements within the framework of the initial solution.

What is ISIS?

ISIS is a tailored version of OpenUP for business rule and optimization

projects. It greatly enhances the IBM ability to consistently provide great

quality, and deliver projects on time and within budget. It codifies project

management skills specific to business rule and optimization projects, and

supplements OpenUP with guidelines and artifacts to optimize project

management and technical expertise from project to project in order to

minimize project and technical risks.

ISIS tailors the five phases of OpenUP and defines consulting services for

IBM ILOG software:

Inception Phase: IBM offers assessment and scoping services to help customers determine their goals and needs, scope of work, and cost and schedule estimates.

Assessment: By involving IBM Consultants at the beginning, you make sure that your project starts on the right track. Based on a standard set of benchmarks, IBM consultants

perform a thorough and in-depth assessment of your business and project objectives, and the

readiness of your IT infrastructure and skill sets for deploying business rule and/or optimiza-

tion technology.


Scoping: IBM consultants can help develop a scope of work with practical and realistic schedules and cost estimates. Since ISIS uses iterative development, scoping also identifies

and prioritizes the system functionality that should be delivered in the different iterations.

Elaboration Phase: During the elaboration phase, we offer a prototyping service to assist with architecture design, technology selection and basic software design.

Prototype: Reducing technical risks in a project involves identifying and vetting key issues in crucial areas such as performance, integration and functionality. A prototype, or

proof of concept (POC), is often the best way to choose from among a variety of potential

technical or functional approaches. ILOG has developed POCs for a wide variety of business

rule and optimization problems in many different industries. Using the tools, technologies

and starter code in ISIS, IBM Consultants quickly develops complete POCs.

Construction Phase: The IBM ILOG Application Development service complements your development team to help them build business rule or optimization modules for your system

cleanly and efficiently.

Application Development: ISIS-based development follows iterative cycles with checkpoint gates between iterations that involve all the project stakeholders. This ensures that

all the stakeholders are on the same page at each stage of the project. This is particularly

important for projects whose scope of work is difficult to define from the beginning. The

iterative approach helps stakeholders to imagine what they would like from what they see,

iteration by iteration.

Transition Phase: After the system is completed, the application is transitioned to your team, along with documentation, training and initial hands-on support as needed.

Production Phase: Once the application is operational, IBM continues to support you through source-code maintenance, performance fine-tuning, benchmarking and technology

upgrade services.


Highlights

IBM has a set of complementary best practices

to support the various processes within ISIS.

They cover all the phases of business rule and

optimization projects.

Application Maintenance: IBM provides support and maintenance after application delivery and deployment. This can include, for example, enhancing the application to take

advantage of new technology upgrades from IBM.

In addition, IBM has a set of complementary best practices to support the

various processes within ISIS. They cover all the phases of business rule

and optimization projects. For instance, in the context of business rule

management, the Repository Management Best Practice addresses the

best way to organize rules and implement a rule life cycle, while other best

practices are aimed at developing a rule language suited to the specific

requirements of a given group of business users.

Software Development Best Practices

OpenUP advises project leaders to follow six best practiceskey guidelines to

project success. ISIS supports OpenUPs best practices, but tailors them for

business rule and optimization projects:

1. Develop software iteratively

ISIS uses iterative development to provide risk-oriented project

management. With each iteration, the key technical project risks are

identified and addressed. Compared with other iterative approaches, such as

feature-oriented development, the risk-oriented approach means that:

It is easier to accommodate requirement changesa primary source of project problems.

Your business and technical teams are deeply involved in selecting requirements with each itera-

tion, in addition to requirements clarification, design review, test elaboration and acceptance tests.


There is no big bang integration at the end. Instead, intermediate versions are integrated and

validated by users from the start.

The team monitors technical risks through ongoing risk reviews and proactive risk mitigation.

By correcting software errors over several iterations, the system and its architecture become more

robust.

The development process itself can be improved and refined with each iteration.

The iterative approach is not open-ended because the number, duration

and objectives of iterations are carefully planned, and the tasks and

responsibilities of participants are well defined. In addition, objective

measures of progress are captured. Some reworking takes place from one

iteration to the next, but this, too, is carefully controlled. ISIS describes

the iterations for business rule projects to be roughly three weeks each and

extends this to six weeks for optimization projects.

2. Manage requirements

Requirements management is a systematic approach to elicit, organize,

communicate and manage the changing requirements of a software-

intensive system or application. Just like OpenUP, ISIS applies use cases

for user requirements. In addition, ISIS places strong emphasis on the

communication process as a key contributor to the success of a project.

Feedback is continuously implemented through repeated planning, code

integration and software releases. This approach facilitates requirement

changes that unavoidably happen as you gain more experience with the

evolving system.


The benefits of effective requirements management include:

Better control of complex projects: This includes a greater understanding of the intended system behavior and prevention of scope creep.

Improved software quality and customer satisfaction: The fundamental measure of quality is whether a system does what it is supposed to do. With ISIS, this can be

more easily assessed because all the stakeholders have a common understanding of what must

be built and tested. The ISIS project plan has a direct mapping to the requirements, iterations,

components to develop and architecture layers. ISIS facilitates requirements management through

continuous communication with all the stakeholders.

Built-in set of standard and recurring requirements: For example, in business rule application development, our requirements include rule authoring, rule repository, rule

deployment, rule testing and validation, and rule execution.

Reduced project costs and delays: Fixing requirement and design errors is expensive. With effective requirements management, you can decrease these errors early in the

development, thereby cutting project costs and preventing delays.

Improved team communication ISIS facilitates the involvement of users early in the process, helping to ensure that the application meets their needs. Well-managed requirements

build a common understanding of the project needs and commitments among the stakeholders.

3. Use component-based architecture

A component can be defined as a nontrivial piece of software: a module,

package or subsystem that performs a clear function, has a clear boundary

and can be integrated into a well-defined architecture. IBM ILOG business

rule and optimization components provide highly sophisticated and complex

software algorithms and techniques, and easy integration into software

applications.


ISIS supports component-based development in several ways:

ISISs iterative approach helps developers to progressively identify components and decide which

ones to develop, reuse or buy.

ISIS includes reusable components and starter code.

ISIS contains reusable architectures, frameworks, patterns and designs. An architecture enumer-

ates the components and the ways they integrate and the fundamental mechanisms and patterns

by which they interact.

Concepts such as packages, subsystems and layers are used during analysis, design and project

planning to organize components and specify interfaces.

Testing is organized around single components first and then gradually expanded to include

larger sets of integrated components.

4. Visually model software

ISIS uses the UML diagram notations to provide a graphical blueprint of

the target system in the form of requirements, functions and components.

ISIS takes a pragmatic view of visual modeling, focusing mainly on three

types of diagrams: use cases for requirements, class diagrams for organizing

objects, and sequence diagrams for specifying dynamic behavior. Other UML

diagrams may be used to provide supplementary design information.

5. Continuously verify quality

Every member of the development organizationusers, developers, testers

and project managersis involved in quality verification. ISIS promotes a

test-driven approach to development and quality assurance. All development

begins with designing the tests.


This provides an important set of test cases that can be used to continuously

control software quality. ISIS also emphasizes requirements tracking and

testing. Bug-free software that does not satisfy the customers needs is

essentially useless!

Performance tests and enhancement are standard parts of the ISIS

construction phase and help deliver scalable applications. ISIS considers

process quality an integral part of software quality. This deals with

the quality of the artifacts, including iteration plans, test plans, use-case

realizations and design models produced to support the principal product,

in addition to the concept of checkpoint gates to review, assess and validate

each major phase of the project.

ISIS applies a test-driven approach to software development. IBM practices

continuous code integration and testing, and tracks requirements and

defects. In many cases, the guidelines define step-by-step tasks for reaching

service delivery.

6. Control changes to software

Particularly in iterative development, working software is continuously

extended and enhanced. By helping flexibility in the planning and execution

of the development process and by helping the requirements to evolve,

iterative development emphasizes the importance of tracking changes and

ensuring that everything and everyone is in sync. Focused closely on the

needs of the customer, change management is a systematic approach to

managing changes in requirements, design and implementation. It also

covers the important activities for tracking defects, misunderstandings and

project commitments, and associating these activities with specific artifacts

and releases. Change management is tied to configuration management and

measurements.


Our Value Proposition

The ISIS methodology represents the IBM commitment to providing the best

consulting services in the industry, with the highest return on investment

(ROI) in the most professional manner. By making our ISIS methodology

available to all our consulting projects for IBM ILOG software, we offer

substantial value to our customers well beyond traditional ad-hoc consulting:

High-quality project management: ISIS provides a framework that helps project managers and consultants to manage consulting projects with a structure that delivers high

quality of service in a timely manner without being too rigid. ISIS also works well with many other

software development methodologies, including what you may already have in place. By following

ISIS, IBM consultants provide high-quality project management capabilitiesregardless of the

industry and/or problem domain.

Done right each and every time: The step-by-step work guidelines within ISIS ensure that all consulting projects have access to best practices encapsulating experience from projects

similar in nature and complexity. Optimizing these guidelines, IBM consultants provide high-

quality design and implementation.

Maximize project agility: The iterative approach imparts the ability to adapt to evolving business requirements and change requests during the project. Two elementsconfiguration

management and business requirements managementare ISIS best practices that bring signifi-

cant benefits to solutions.

Maximize ROI: Your ROI is maximized because you not only get the skills and knowledge of one consultant, but the aggregated experience and skills accumulated by consultants from

hundreds of projects as well. This experience is reflected in the work guidelines and the reusable

project management artifacts and software code that provide a framework to jumpstart your

project.

ISIS: Delivering Successful SolutionsEach and Every Time Page 14

Minimize time to payback: Optimally applying our experience and best practices through iterative development creates intermediate releases of the solution, each delivering additional and

incremental business value and benefits. A particular focus on minimizing such payback (i.e.,

maximizing the ROI of every iteration) underlies the design of the work plan and the contents of the

iterations.

Minimize risks: By utilizing past successes, IBM consultants greatly minimize your risks. They have access to reusable resources, including design patterns, software components, starter

code and architectural designs and specifications, to ensure that technical risks are minimized,

and to work guidelines and reusable project artifacts to ensure that project management risks are

minimized as well.

Value-added benefits: IBM consulting services provide:

Access to ISIS: IBM consultants and project managers make relevant parts of ISIS avail-able during consulting engagements, either partially for short-term projects or completely for

significant engagements. Project managers, architects and technical consultants constantly

update ISIS, making it a focal point for sharing knowledge and expertise for consulting projects

based on IBM ILOG software. It also acts as a large repository of accumulated domain knowl-

edge to enable IBM consultants to tap into the expertise of a worldwide network of profession-

als.

Access to ISIS artifacts: Relevant ISIS project management and implementation arti-facts are made available to customers and partners through the engagement of IBM Software

Services, either partially for short-term projects or completely for major engagements. These

artifacts reduce technical risks and the time needed for designing and architecting, in addition

to the implementation effort. They represent best practices for implementing solutions and

encapsulate experience from solving a broad range of different problems.

Learn More

For more information about IBM Software Services for WebSphere, visit:

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ISIS: The Way to Your SolutionStarting on the Right TrackIterative ProgressDont Reinvent the Wheel

What is the Unified Process?Unified Process ArchitectureWhat is ISIS?Software Development Best PracticesOur Value PropositionLearn More

ISIS Delivering Successful Solutions - Each and Every Time

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