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ISIS: Delivering Successful SolutionsEach and Every Time

December 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 Time

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ISIS: The Way to Your Solution

Contents
ISIS: The Way to Your Solution

Starting on the Right Track

Iterative Progress

Dont Reinvent the Wheel

What is the Unified Process?

Unified Process Architecture

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

What is ISIS?

Software Development
Best Practices

Our Value Proposition

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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

Learn More

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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.

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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.

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Highlights

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 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

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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 definition 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 iterative 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.

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Highlights

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.

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 optimization technology.

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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.

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Highlights

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.

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.

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

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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 softwareintensive 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.

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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.

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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 enumerates 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.

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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.

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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 highquality 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 significant 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.

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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 available 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 knowledge to enable IBM consultants to tap into the expertise of a worldwide network of professionals.

Access to ISIS artifacts: Relevant ISIS project management and implementation artifacts 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
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December 2009
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