Productivity improvement with evolutionary development

Abstract

An evolutionary approach to software development can realize lifetime productivity improvements. The authors explain the natural evolutionary process of software. Negative evolutionary influences can erode the useful life of software, but these can be regulated. Software evolves through three stages: (1) elaboration, (2) adaptation, and (3) mutation, progressive expansion/growth. Differing life cycle models are contrasted for how they consider these three evolutionary stages, how well they meet customer needs, and how they take into account evolution regulators. By using an evolutionary approach to software development, the benefits of the effort spent on development are actualized over a longer period of time. Productivity increases because the life span of the product increases, gains in development productivity are not eaten up by support cost, and development productivity gains are not lost because of a lack of understanding of evolution.<>