Info Support International Endeavour Solution

Endeavour Improves Development Life Cycle and Predictability

For many years, Info Support has been successfully active in all aspects of the software product lifecycle, in both the development and the management processes. A lot of theoretical knowledge and practical experience have been gained in the field of project management, methods and technologies. In addition, a large number of standard software building blocks, tools and process guidance have been constructed that accelerate the software development process. In order to make this knowledge available to third parties, Info Support packaged this knowledge into their software factory called Endeavour.

Endeavour is a software factory in which the production process and the production resources are highly standardised and structured. It offers a proven approach for evolutionary software development, maintenance and management of (custom-made) on the product family of enterprise administrative applications. This manufacturing-like approach will guarantee improved software development quality, improved project predictability and high productivity, resulting in a shorter time-to-market and lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

Our customers are increasingly aware of the fact that an optimal price/performance ratio for software development must be placed in perspective of the total product lifecycle. Using the software factory “Endeavour”, Info Support will help its customers to implement a standardised approach for software development, in line with market practice.

Unique selling point and added value

The unique selling point of Endeavour is the ability to guarantee the productivity and quality (Totality of characteristics of a product or process that bear on its ability to satisfy stated and implied needs (ISO 8402)) of the application that is delivered by the software factory.

We will express this productivity and quality related to business functionality (function points, ISO/IEC 24570:2004) in function points per hour and defects per function point. In addition to function points, we will also investigate the use of Cosmic Full Function Points (CFFP), since not all systems can be expressed in function points.

We also estimate the cost of application maintenance (application maintenance is responsible for maintaining the application software and the database) based on the productivity and quality of the software factory . We are investigating how to estimate the costs of operations related to business functionality expressed in operational costs per function point.

Thanks to Info Supports Knowledge Centre, we are also able to assess the quality and productivity of the customer’s employees working with the software product line. An assessment of the customer’s employees followed by intensive training/coaching is a fundamental requirement.

Service levels

Our service consists of a four-level service model. At the lowest level, the customer can begin by purchasing one or more separate products from different layers (see figure). For the customer investment at the “separate products” level is very limited. At this level, the customer can become acquainted with the Professional Development Center. The customer can then move on to the second level, “the integrated product set”, the integration of one or more layers (infrastructure, technology, technical processes and management processes).

Should the customer wish to make agreements about productivity and/or quality he will have to move on to at least level two: “the integrated product set”. At the highest level, the customer should be able to achieve Operational Excellence in ICT: the smart sourcing level.

At this level, Info Support, in cooperation with companies from low-wage countries, will be able to offer some offshore outsourcing.

Service levels

Knowledge areas within the software product line

The software factory implements the following five software factory viewpoints:

Management Processes. All processes that focus on the management of the total product lifecycle; based on the following (de facto) standards and technologies, among others: ISO 12207, PRINCE2, PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge), PSM (Practical Software and Systems Measurement, ISO/IEC 15939), EVM (Earned Value Management).
Software engineering. All processes that focus on software engineering; based on the following (de facto) standards and technologies, among others: ISO/IEC 12207, RUP (Rational Unified Process), product quality (ISO/IEC 9126-2, -3 and -4) and measurements (PSM, ISO/IEC 15939) in daily processes, software and trend analysis techniques.
Technology. Architecture, standards, components and tools, such as reference architecture for service-oriented software, coding standards and automated tools. Basic metrics will be delivered for software and trend analysis using automated tools to the maximum extent possible. The Technology viewpoint supports both .NET Development as well as Java Development.
Infrastructure. Implementation and configuration of development, test and production environments. With support for simultaneous product environments, so parallel development with various products and/or various versions is possible.
Support. All processes that focus on maintenance of the total product lifecycle; based on the following (de facto) standards and technologies, among others: ITIL, MOF (Microsoft Operations Framework) and ASL (Application Services Library).

Close cooperation with Microsoft

With the participation of Info Support in the Technical Adaption Program (TAP) of Microsoft Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) we have a close cooperation with Microsoft in the Technology viewpoint. The current release of Endeavour.Net is based on VSTS.

Measuring Success With Software Factories

Having a software factory is not enough to be successful. To become successful, you have to measure the impact and improvements on productivity, quality and predictability of a software factory. One of the first steps in the measurement process is to define the information needs. To define measures we use an extension of the PSM measurement constructs.

A measurement construct is a detailed structure that links the base measures to the specified information needs. The measurement construct include specific attributes of software processes and products, such as size, effort, and number of defects. The measurement construct describes how the relevant software attributes are quantified and converted to indicators that provide a basis for decision making.

At each of the three levels of measures – base measures, derived measures and indicators – additional information content is added in the form of rules, models, and decision criteria.

Related information

More information

If you want more information about the services of Info Support, contact Sales Support & Marketing, phone +31 (0)318 - 55 20 20 or send an e-mail sales.nl@infosupport.com.