Concepts in the definition of an enterprise development process

Integrated Product Development - IPD - is an enterprise-wide process used by IBM to develop technology products including hardware, software, and services. IPD has been in use at IBM for over a decade and has been very effective at increasing efficiency and reducing costs across the whole product life cycle. Within IBM Software Group, IPD at the top level is defined informally through natural-language documents, ad hoc diagrams, and a database of well-defined deliverables. Some key concepts in the SWG IPD definition include a clear statement of the principles on which the process is based, widespread references to business goals, frequent use of governance-oriented formulations, a clearly defined structure for the high levels of the process, a relative lack of concern about lower levels of the process structure, and an emphasis on the characterization of participant roles. The relative lack of formal and semantic rigor in the SWG IPD definition might seem to open the door to a number of problems in process specification and execution. However, this seems to have allowed the process definers to focus on those aspects of the process that are most important and to present those in a natural way. In the context of an organization that is dedicated to the success of the process, this has been an effective approach.