A hybrid approach to OO development: the SUMMITrak project at TCI

Industry evidence suggests that many purebred object-oriented (OO) software development projects in the industry are failing to meet expectations and are being abandoned in favor of a "hybrid" approach, where OO tools, techno logies, and methodologies are combined with those from the traditional stru ctured system development paradigm. The value of this hybrid approach lies in that it can help organizations leverage their existing traditional syste m development resources (staff, skills, tools, and project management), whi le taking advantage of the architectural superiority of OO tools and techni ques for timely and cost-effective implementation of large, complex project s. This paper describes the SUMMITrak project at TCI, where such a hybrid a pproach was deployed successfully to build an enterprise-scale billing syst em for the cable industry. Our study provides a "proof of concept" that a h ybrid approach is not only feasible, but in fact, may be desirable for many enterprise-scale projects. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reser ved.