What is the Exia Software Process?

The Exia Software Process is a revolutionary new software process which, if followed properly, virtually guarantees the success of software projects.

Building on the flexible, iterative foundation of Agile, ESP adds elements of the Rational Unified Process and traditional waterfall methods, as well as many entirely new concepts and tools. The result is a methodology that is the best of both worlds—answering the need for teams be agile and adaptable, while at the same time answering the needs of management for accountability and predictability.

The Exia Software Process was conceived in response to the urgent need for a software process that simply works well. It is ideally suited to medium size projects in the $100K to $10M range, however it can be scaled up or down to suit the project size. It works equally well for private organizations that value agility and government organizations that value accountability and control.

The failure of the software industry to develop a successful software engineering process is well known and well documented. A key challenge is the R&D nature of software projects, which involves continuous discovery. Early attempts to manage software projects used a deterministic, controlling approach called the Waterfall method. These failed because their gated stages prevented incorporation of new found knowledge into the process. In response, iterative methodologies were introduced. The best known of these is the Rational Unified Process, or RUP. However the complexity of the RUP, the diffulty of determining the nature of a RUP iteration, and the RUP's focus on the development of models, rather than software end products, means that in practice teams tend to pay lip service to it much more than they actually use it. The result is that the Rational Unified Process, while it contains many valuable concepts, has not resulted in mainstream success of software projects.

More recently, a set of processes called Agile has emerged. Based on the principles of early software delivery, simplicity, face to face communication and an incremental and iterative lifecycle, Agile has gained widespread support. In particular Microsoft have tooled their industry standard Team Foundation Studio to support the Microsoft Solution Framework version of Agile.

While Agile holds great promise, it too has its share of problems. Agile projects often run out of control, lack accountability, have insufficient sense of direction or purpose, and are lacking clear and complete documentation. In short, Agile is strong on concepts, but weak on structure.

Hence, after thirty years of software evolution, the hapless project manager of today simply has no good choice of methodology. Instead he is forced to choose between the lesser of three evils in the hope that somehow things will turn out better this time than they have in the past.   

Enter the Exia Software Process.

The Exia Software Process incorporates the best elements of Agile, RUP and waterfall methodologies to create a revolutionary new choice for software project managers, a choice that, if followed, virtually guarantees success.

Imagine a software project where the client was always happy, confident and optimistic, where the developers felt empowered to do their very best work, and knew what they had to do every day, where the requirements were clear and unambiguous, where the designs were concise and easy to program from, where the documentation was always up to date and publicly available for everyone to see, where a rhythmic cycle determined the flow of work well in advance, where nothing was done in knee-jerk style, and where working software was delivered regularly, on time, and on budget.

This is what an Exia Software Process project is like. Projects managed with the Exia Software Process are agile and adaptable, yet have a clear and well articulated plan. Underpinning that plan are the Exia Software Process guidance artefacts and software tools that ensure the process is well managed and ensure the software is built rapidly and accurately. The result is powerful, adaptable, focused teams that deliver premium software products with engineering style reliability.