Spiral Approach for Non‐Software Product and Engineering System Development

ABSTRACT This article explored the spiral development process, sometimes called “evolutionary acquisition” in military sectors, and reviewed major non‐software applications in the engineering literature. The spiral development process was originally developed for the design of software while minimizing and managing risk, but the principles can be applied to a wide variety of systems engineering problems where risk management is a priority. The major application domains discussed in this review were product design and development, robotics, agriculture and construction systems, product‐service and human‐technology systems, medical systems and devices, military and aerospace systems, and data management, enterprise systems, and information technology systems. This exploration and accompanying discussion are useful for system designers, systems engineering educators, and other major stakeholders, as it shows successful applications in a wide variety of non‐software technology sectors and provides guidance for application in new areas. The review clearly showed the usefulness and wide variety of non‐software product and system design applications in which the spiral method had been employed from the early 1990s until the present time. Far from being an obsolete or “dated” design method, it has become even more widely used and refined in recent years, which is a trend that appears likely to continue as engineering systems and technology development become more complex and distributed.