Catalyst’s structure is identified in six phases performed against sets of related activities, called framework areas, as shown in figure 6-1.

Phases are Catalyst’s structure for sequencing and describing the work of business change and system development. They are a convenient mechanisms for establishing an overall sequence, are the basis for planning and estimating, facilitate project and program wide synchronization of activities, and chart decision points for management. There are six phases:

• Five for system development—Vision and Strategy, Architecture, Development, Integration, and Deployment
• One for system operations—Operational Services, which covers all aspects of operations and maintenance support.

The Vision and Strategy phase examines the enterprise itself, its processes, and its overall automated support philosophy—a necessary first step to ensure that the automated systems provide tangible value to the enterprise.

The remaining four development phases address, respectively, what traditional life-cycle methodologies cover in system requirements and design, system implementation, system integration and test, and system deployment. Because much of the design required to support CHART II is being accomplished as part of this design runoff, it is the final development, integration, and deployment phases of Catalyst that are of particular interest for the implementation of CHART II.

The Catalyst framework is a flexible and adaptable structure within which the CSC/PBFI Team will plan, execute, integrate, test, deploy and maintain CHART II applications and systems. The framework areas are as follows:

• Development Coordination. This framework area covers work on multiple, related sub-projects to make sure that all aspects fit together. It includes traditional system engineering support activities and is the tool we will use to address coordination issues.

• Project Management and Service Management. Two related but separate framework areas cover management of development and operations/maintenance projects. Service Management addresses the Project Management activities for the sixth phase.

• Operational Services. We will use these areas to selectively apply management discipline to control schedule, cost, risks, configuration, and quality on each CHART II sub-task.

• Program Management. It covers a collection of sub-projects related to a common strategic objective. This set of activities addresses planning, staffing, monitoring, controlling, and concluding business change and development efforts during one or all of the first five phases.

Paths are Catalyst’s approach to the development and maintenance of application systems. Separate paths flow horizontally through the Process Enablement parts of the architecture and development phases shown in figure 6-1. Each path satisfies different customer needs and initial conditions for the effort. In addition, four development paths, one maintenance path, and one application reengineering path is provided.

For CHART II we will be employing a combination of two development paths: the traditional development approach combined with accelerated application development.

• Traditional development approach: Requirements Driven Development (RDD).

• Evolutionary development approach: Accelerated Application Development (X/AD). X/AD is the path to rapid application development in an environment where requirements are not firmly established at the outset. It combines workshops, labs, prototyping, full-time user participation, and timebox management in an approach that rapidly elicits requirements, develops a prototype, and transforms the prototype into a production application.

A combination of these paths is required for CHART II because while we have a very specific set of software functional requirements that must be met, we also wish to retain the flexibility to use extensive prototyping, accept changes as development and implementation proceeds, and to employ accelerated application deployment. We will document this task-specific approach in the Program Management Plan to be provided to the MDSHA at the beginning of the project. (See Section 6.3, Our Five-Step Management Approach.)

Table 6-1 summarizes the major activities of each Catalyst phase and specialty area. While it is the Development phase and later phases that are most applicable to CHART II, a review of information normally obtained during the Vision and Strategy and Architecture phases will be made to ensure true understanding and a common point of beginning between MDSHA and its CSC/PBFI partners.

Catalyst provides the methodology to ensure that: