Jeppesen's Customized Software Development Process Delivers Compliance And Flexibility

In the past 10 years, building highly complex navigation systems has become more difficult. New markets, technological advances, and new partnerships have increased product complexity, while intricate sourcing models and increasingly global development organizations have boosted organizational complexity. In response to this difficult landscape, Jeppesen, a provider of integrated navigation, operations, and logistics solutions for transportation providers, decided to transform its software development approach by moving from a traditional, artifact-centric, hand-off-oriented life cycle to an iterative, risk-driven, architecture-centric approach. The Rational Unified Process (RUP) served as the foundation for the new process, but Jeppesen extended it by incorporating the organization's own best practices and 75 years of experience. Along with the new process, Jeppesen put in place organizational change processes to ensure that innovation and change are a fundamental tenet of its "future-proofed" process. Building a process for today was important, but building a process that supported the unknowns of the future was crucial for long-term success.