Evolutionary Process for Integrating COTS-Based Systems

Evolutionary Process for Integrating COTS-Based Systems (EPIC) is designed to support building, fielding and supporting software-intensive systems using available Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) and other pre-existing components.

EPIC redefines acquisition, management, and engineering practices to more effectively leverage the COTS marketplace and other sources of pre-existing components. This is accomplished through concurrent discovery and negotiation of diverse spheres of influence: user needs and business processes, applicable technology and components, the target architecture, and programmatic constraints.

EPIC codifies these practices in a structured flow of key activitiesand artifacts. This alternative approach is a risk-based, disciplined, spiral-engineering approach which leverages the Rational Unified Process (RUP).

The first release of an overview of EPIC is found in the Software Engineering Institute technical report: CMU/SEI-2002-TR-009 [http://www.sei.cmu.edu/publications/documents/02.reports/02tr009.html] .

Framework

To accommodate the continuous change induced by the COTS marketplace, EPIC appliesa risk-based spiral development process. EPIC users manage the gathering of informationfrom the marketplace and the stakeholders and refine that information through analysis andnegotiation into a coherent, emerging solution that is embodied in a series of executablerepresentations through the life of the project. Stakeholders actively participate in EPIC askey players in day-to-day negotiations that also continue through the life of the solution.This also ensures their buy-in to the emerging solution.

EPIC is more than a way to select a specific component. Use of EPIC begins with thedefinition of a need for a new or changed capability and a commitment to provide theresources necessary to identify, acquire, build, field, and support a solution that will deliverthat capability. Use of EPIC ends only when the solution is retired or replaced with a newsolution. In some instances, the solution will be transitioned to a different organization forsupport once it has been fielded. The major features of EPIC should also be used by thesupport organization to protect the investment in components.

References

Evolutionary Process for Integrating COTS-Based Systems (EPIC): An Overview [http://www.sei.cmu.edu/publications/documents/02.reports/02tr009.html] Ceci Albert, Lisa Brownsword