Experienced information technology practitioners have learned over time that there are only a limited number of general problems and situations that actualy cover a majority of situations encountered on informaton technology initiatives. Our research attenpts to isolate these situations and package the results in management and analysis patterns that can be shared and incorporated into client processes and practices.

In the context of the education program that results from research, patterns are the expert heuristics embedded throughout the curriculum to facilitate expert results from novice and intermediate practitioners. Based on twenty years of actual project modeling and software engineering work, these heuristics have been extracted from thousands of project hours as the most common and useful rules-of-thumb available to the learner or beginning practitioner.

Current patterns include:

• DOQS Six Sigma Patterns - Heuristics for improving Six Sigma project performance.

• DOQS Data-Process Patterns - Heuristics for improving data and process modeling efficiency and effectiveness.

The patterns offer clients immediate access to quality management and software engineering techniques that it normally takes many years of experience to recognize. They aren't magic; just good analysis boiled down to the essential rules and characteristics. Application of these patterns on projects results in improved analysis, better solutions, and more highly skilled analyst practitioners. These modeling and engineering patterns are examples of win-win solutions. If they do apply, value is added to projects through the incremental or explosive addition of embedded details. If they don't apply, value is added to the model through the identification of the business rules leading to their exclusion.

Experienced clients see their own experience in these patterns and are then able to adapt the advanced modeling approaches implied by the patterns. Less experienced novice modelers adapt some of the techniques implied by the patterns to dramatically leap ahead on the experience curve. Organizations benefit from expansive project and system capabilities to increase the quality and extensibility of solutions.