A case study in system integration using the Build approach

An approach to software system integration used at Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) is described and compared with established approaches to system integration. The approach presented here is evolutionary in nature: system functions are integrated and demonstrated to the customer in a series of successive system increments referred to as “Builds”. The order of integration is essentially top-down with vertical slicing, i.e., functional capabilities are demonstrated to the customer only when both high-level control functions and underlying low-level services have been integrated. This paper presents the first reported detailed case study of the application of the Build approach to the development of an actual system.