RIPPLE: Retaining Integrity in Process Products over their Long-Term Evolution

RIPPLE is one of a linked set of projects at the University of Ulster which are based on the premise that an organisation and its IT facilities should be aligned and evolve together towards a documented ‘vision’ for the system as a whole. This strategy is intended to ensure that software development is directly supportive of an organisation and remains aligned as business and computing changes occur. This paper describes 10 contributions made by RIPPLE to a framework for software development based on the co-evolutionary concept. The framework, BASE, is built around the modelling of co-evolutionary change, expressed in the form of a development plan. Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is used to establish the vision for an organisation and much of the work has been concerned with building on the models that it produces. RIPPLE is a collaborative project with the Northern Ireland Civil Service and BT, with additional contributions from NEC.