An evolutionary lifecycle model with Agile practices for software development at ABB

Current software environments face increased pressure to develop products under evolving requirements, changing technologies, scarce human resources, and the need to develop high quality applications. ABB has similar pressures, especially as the organization embraces the Industrial IT initiative that aims at the development of interoperable and intelligent products. A new generation of software development lifecycle models has emerged lately called "Agile" and they embrace change, reduce development cycle time, and attempt a useful compromise between no process and too much process. The Agile Development in Evolutionary Prototyping Technique (ADEPT) presented in this paper, was developed at the ABB US Corporate Research Center, and incorporates "Agile" practices to streamline the technology development lifecycle of Industrial IT products.