Applying the Incremental Commitment Model to Brownfield System Development

The Incremental Commitment Model (ICM) is a risk-driven process model generator for which common risk patterns generate common special-case system definition and development process models. The increasing importance of Brownfield (legacyconstrained) vs. Greenfield (unconstrained) application systems created a challenge of determining an ICM Brownfield risk pattern and an associated set of special-case process guidelines. This paper presents a case study of a failed Brownfield project, and shows how the concurrent-engineering activities, risk assessments, and anchor point milestones of the ICM could have avoided the failure. It compares the resulting ICM special-case Brownfield process with two leading Brownfield approaches, the CMU-SEI SMART approach and the IBM Brownfield approach, and finds them compatible and complementary.