Process trends can be placed inside a triangular map according to their emphasis on three aspects, represented by the vertices: people, technology, and rigor. Plan-oriented, engineering, and research-based approaches tend to view software as a rigid artifact, so they stress technology and rigor over people. Evolutionary approaches tend to view software development as an organic, skills-driven technical activity, so they stress people and technology over rigor. But this scheme of positioning process approaches is rather rough. A more complete scheme requires dissection in terms of seven essential, mutually reinforcing characteristics: human-centricity, technical orientation, discipline, pragmatism, empiricism, experimentation, and value orientation.