It's All About Process

As long ago as 1931, the distinguished American economist, William Edwards Deming said that "If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing!"

In IT today it is still difficult to describe how a business requirement ends up as part of a functioning business service. This is almost never written down as a single contiguous process. At best we seek to articulate this across several different process methodologies, at worst we recognise no process methodology at all and re-invent the wheel with each new business development.

This white paper will look at these issues with emphasis on two process methodologies - CMMI for software engineering, and ITIL for best practices in service delivery. The paper discusses bridging these processes and delivering them as one IT application process. Finally it looks at PTC's process management platform, Integrity, as an example of superior technology for integrated IT process management.