TRADITIONAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES - Software Design for Six-Sigma: A Roadmap for Excellence - page 28

2.3.1.4.1 Advantages

Decrease in maintenance cases resulting from improved product quality.
Decrease in the maintenance effort resulting in the existence of adequate soft-
ware documentation and an easier understanding because of the uniform struc-
ture.

2.3.1.4.2 Disadvantages

It is resource heavy and very costly to implement.
The V-Model is not complete. It says that the submodels cover all activity while
it is done at too abstract level.
It is hard to find out whether peer reviews and inspections are done in the
V-Model.
It is difficult to find out whether the self-assessment activity is conducted before
product is passed on to the QA for acceptance.

2.3.1.4.3 Suitability. The V-Model was originally intended to be used as a standard
development model for information technology (IT) projects in Germany, but it has
not been adapted to innovations in IT since 1997.

2.3.1.5 V-Model XT. The V-Model represents the development standard for
public-sector IT systems in Germany. For many companies and authorities, it is
the way forward for the organization and implementation of IT planning, such as
the development of the Bundestag's new address management, the police's new IT
system “Inpol-neu,” and the Eurofighter's on-board radar (V-Model XT, 2008). More
and more IT projects are being abandoned before being completed, or suffer from
deadlines and budgets being significantly overrun, as well as reduced functionality.
This is where the V-Model comes into its own and improves the product and pro-
cess quality by providing concrete and easily implementable instructions for carrying
out activities and preformulated document descriptions for development and project
documentation (V-Model XT, 2008).
The current standard, the V-Model 97, has not been adapted to innovations in
information technology since 1997. It was for this reason that the Ministry of De-
fense/Federal Office for Information Management and Information Technology and
Interior Ministry Coordination and Consultancy Office for Information Technology
in Federal Government commissioned the project Further Development of the Devel-
opment Standard for IT Systems of the Public sector Based on the V-Model 97 from
the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and its partners IABG, EADS, Siemens
AG, 4Soft GmbH, and TU Kaiserslautern (V-Model XT, 2008). The new V-Model
XT (eXtreme Tailoring) includes extensive empirical knowledge and suggests im-
provements that were accumulated throughout the use of the V-Model 97 (V-Model