What is spiral development?

In the mid-1980s, Barry Boehm, then a chief scientist at TRW Inc., devised spiral development as a way to reduce risk on large software projects.

Because software engineers all too often designed and built large software programs with little ongoing consultation from customers, the resulting programs did not meet the end-user requirements or were delayed by unforeseen obstacles. Boehm stressed a cyclical approach in which customers evaluated early results and in-house engineers identified potential trouble spots at an early stage.

Although Boehm formulated spiral development for software engineering, the Department of Defense has adapted the technique as part of its evolutionary acquisition strategy to get newer technologies into large platforms, such as assault vehicles and computer systems, much more quickly.

More information on the spiral development methodology may be found at the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute Web site at http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cbs/spiral2000/february2000/BoehmSR.html .