This concept came out of system integration work at Planning Research Corporation around 1992. It illustrates straegic planning driving development, the architecture process. The diagram is still very useful today and illustrates many key points.
On the left is architecture, on the right is testing, at the bottom is software development activity (such as all of Agile or Spiral development) or hardware development or both.
The top 3 activities on the left represent enterprise and segment architecture. These drive solution architecture in a sequence.
Arcoss the middle flow criteria that are used for testing results.
At the top strategic goals and SWOT analysis are used for testing strategic positioning and transformation.
Second down, operational requirements aka business requirements pass to the right, and these are the business process changes and resulting performance measures of the changed organization.
Third down are functional requirements for evaluating solutions, independent of the chooice of solution.
At the bottom are the solution specifications resulting from a proposed, selected and/or implemented solution. (There can be multiple potential solutions with different specifications in competition.)
On the right alpha test is the vendor's testing of the developed solution to its proposed spesifications.
Next up, beta test is the receiving or procuring organization's test of functional suitability and acceptance.
Third, gamma test is the operational testing of the solution in situ, and the unit under test is not no longer the solution but the organization as improved. This occurs at cut over, after a fixed period of initialization, then periodicly thereafter in most implementations.
Delta test, topmost right, is the reevaluation of the transformed organization to determine if the strategic goal has been met and the SWOT analysis position has changed. This testing consists of exercises, drills, inspections, audits of the organization and the transformed activity or function.
"If you do anything long enough, you eventually get good at it." MK
