Zero Deviation Life Cycle

The Zero Deviation Life Cycle (ZDLC) is a “smart” Application Lifecycle Management Platform, that reduces the Total Cost of Ownership of IT Systems through mathematically rigorous next-generation automation.

Software development has generated a multitude of methodologies, tools, and practices over the years, but few (if any) have managed to deliver on the value that was promised and more often than not are just shifting complexity or cost from one part of the SDLC to another. ZDLC enables software engineers and architects to explicitly target zero-defect development, significantly reducing costs and time-to-market, while increasing product quality and customer satisfaction.

In marked contrast to traditional software development and project management tools, ZDLC incorporates sophisticated scientific theory and engineering best practices within intuitive, game-like interfaces that actually accelerate user adoption.

Background

“The ZDLC (Zero Deviation Life Cycle) is a platform developed by Cognizant with the vision of improving the efficiency, cost and quality of building IT systems”. The ZDLC Platform follows 5 basic principles:

• Removing Ambiguity in Requirements,
• Minimising the injection of Defects into the SDLC
• Minimising the Leakage of Defects between phases of the SDLC
• Reducing the Cost of a Defect and
• Instigating a culture of continuous and sustainable innovation within development lifecycles.

It enforces the 5 principles by executing the following actions:

• Directly addressing how errors initially get introduced into the wider development lifecycle
• Reducing the onward communication of errors into subsequent phases of the development lifecycle
• Giving structure to requirements gathering allowing problem and solution patterns to be formally identified – enabling Re-Use
• Automating the determination of the root-cause of remaining errors/defects in products
• Introducing sustainable Innovation as part of the product delivery culture

We recognise that there are also many contexts where such abilities may be needed, so the ZDLC has been designed to be:

• Executed in any style of implementation e.g. Iterative (RUP), Agile (SCRUM),..
• Used with any technology-stack (e.g. JavaEE, .NET, Mainframe, Open Source,..) with equal effectiveness
• Adopted without needing to re-train or make changes to traditional SDLC roles
• Applied to Projects in any form or stage – New Build, Migration, Transformation,.. or Planned, In-flight, Post Go-Live, ..
• Purchased all together or individual tools purchased and used separately

The ZDLC Suite of Tools

A tool in ZDLC is the smallest entity of the ZDLC framework. A tool is a software we built that automates and enforces the principles of ZDLC. A tool is designed to solve generic problems of development life cycles such as requirement validation, checking of design artefacts for design defects and testing the functionality and performance of products. The following table depicts the tools created to support, automate and practice the fundamental principles of the ZDLC Framework.

The ZDLC Product

The Products of ZDLC were designed to resolve specific problems of IT enabled business processes. A product, in our context, is a logical grouping of the ZDLC tools (see table above), to solve a specific problem within a client engagement. The following table presents the most popular products that employ the ZDLC tools to resolve business problems and show measurable business value by enacting the fundamental principles of ZDLC.

Delivering measurable business value is a fundamental goal of ZDLC.

Articles

1. “Smart Technology Migration with ZDLC?”, Kymberly Lytle, Bippin Makoond May 1, 2013 ZDLC
2. “Academia & Industry… a bridge too far?“, Bippin Makoond, March 23, 2013, ZDLC
3. “On the Whiteboard: the 5 posts story of SDP”, Bippin Makoond, March 8, 2013, ZDLC
4. “Requirements, Ambiguity and Conflicts… Cheque Please!”, Brameshmadhav Srinivasan, Bippin Makoond, March 06, 2013, ZDLC
5. “ZDLC ADAPT: Summary”, Bippin Makoond, February 24, 2013, ZDLC
6. “An Overview on ZDLC SMART Technology Migration (STeM)”, Vanessa Kho, February 20, 2013, ZDLC
7. “ZDLC at Cognizant Innovation Forum”, Steve Ross-Talbot, Monika Gierszewska, February 18, 2013, ZDLC
8. “Zero Deviation Life Cycle: with Agile? Part (2/2)”, Bippin Makoond, Tim Dineen, February, 13, 2013, ZDLC
9. “Did you hear about the Voices?”, Bippin Makoond, February, 10, 2013, ZDLC
   
10. “Ovum View on ZDLC”, Michael Azoff, February, 04, 2013, Ovum Report
11. “ZDLC: Formally Verifying SOA Designs Against Requirements at QCon”, Steve Ross-Talbot, February, 03, 2013, InfoQ
12. “ZDLC: TRiZ”, Bippin Makoond, February, 01, 2013, ZDLC Blog
13. “Is that what you meant? (1/4)”, Steve Ross-Talbot, Bippin Makoond, January, 29, 2013, ZDLC
14. “HoQ-e: House of Quality-enhanced for IT (Part 2/2)”, Keerthi Kethan, Bippin Makoond, Steve Ross-Talbot, Tim Dineen, January, 27, 2013, ZDLC
15. “HoQ-e: House of Quality-enhanced for IT (Part 1/2)”, Keerthi Kethan, Bippin Makoond, January, 24, 2013, ZDLC
16. “SDP in Brief”, Ajay Narayana, Bippin Makoond, January, 22, 2013, ZDLC
17. “Zero Deviation Life Cycle: Business Process Re-engineering”, Bippin Makoond, Angel Sam Mony, Tim Dineen, January, 21, 2013, ZDLC
18. “Zero Deviation Life Cycle: Why?”, Bippin Makoond, Satrajit Pal, Peter Gill, January, 18, 2013, ZDLC
19. “Zero Deviation Life Cycle: Enterprise Simulation”, Anoop Elias, Stefan Franczuk, Bippin Makoond, January, 16, 2013, ZDLC
20. “Zero Deviation Life Cycle: with Agile? Part (1/2)”, Tim Dineen, Bippin Makoond, January, 13, 2013, ZDLC
21. “Zero Deviation Life Cycle: What is it?”, Steve Ross-Talbot, Bippin Makoond,  January, 12, 2013, ZDLC
22. “Zero Deviation Life Cycle: Objective Innovation (OI)”, Steve Ross-Talbot, Bippin Makoond, January, 12, 2013, ZDLC
23. “Zero Deviation Life Cycle: Smart Technology Migration”, Tim Dineen, Bippin Makoond, January, 12, 2013, ZDLC
24. “Zero Deviation Life Cycle: Smart Architecture Modelling”, Shyam Chivukula, Bippin Makoond, January, 8, 2013, ZDLC