From amorphous to defined: balancing risks in evolutionary acquisition

Abstract

Incremental development entails the deliberate deferral of work to a subsequent period, using technology maturity as the measure of readiness. This article illustrates that this approach might enable more effective delivery of the first increment with a comparison of two major systems as case studies. But there are some inherent risks in an evolutionary approach as well, and the authors caution that certain attributes of hardware products might help determine the suitability of evolutionary development methodologies. Mutable products with costless production, continuous requirements, low maintenance, or time criticality may be more likely to reap advantages from evolutionary approaches. Products that are nearly immutable, have binary requirements for key capabilities, require man-rating, or are maintenance-intensive may not be best candidates for incremental development.