Chapter 2 – Software

Processes

Chapter 2 Software Processes 1

Topics covered

• Software process models

• Process activities
• Coping with change
• Process improvement

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The software process

• A structured set of activities required to develop a

software system.
• Many different software processes but all involve:
• Specification – defining what the system should do;
• Design and implementation – defining the organization of the system and
implementing the system;
• Validation – checking that it does what the customer wants;
• Evolution – changing the system in response to changing customer needs.
• A software process model is an abstract representation of a process.
It presents a description of a process from some particular
perspective.

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Software process descriptions

• we usually talk about the activities in these processes

• specifying a data model, designing a user interface, etc. and the ordering of
these activities.
• Process descriptions may also include:
• Products, which are the outcomes of a process activity;
• Roles, which reflect the responsibilities of the people involved in the process;
• Pre- and post-conditions, which are statements that are true before and after
a process activity has been enacted or a product produced.

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Plan-driven and agile processes

• Plan-driven processes are processes where all of the process

activities are planned in advance and progress is measured against
this plan.
• In agile processes, planning is incremental and it is easier to change
the process to reflect changing customer requirements.
• In practice, most practical processes include elements of both plan-
driven and agile approaches.
• There are no right or wrong software processes.

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 Software process models

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Software process models

• The waterfall model

• Plan-driven model. Separate and distinct phases of specification and
development.
• Incremental development
• Specification, development and validation are interleaved. May be plan-
driven or agile.
• Integration and configuration
• The system is assembled from existing configurable components. May be
plan-driven or agile.
• In practice, most large systems are developed using a process that
incorporates elements from all of these models.

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The waterfall model

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Waterfall model phases

• There are separate identified phases in the waterfall model:

• Requirements analysis and definition
• System and software design
• Implementation and unit testing
• Integration and system testing
• Operation and maintenance
• The main drawback of the waterfall model is the difficulty of
accommodating change after the process is underway.
• In principle, a phase has to be complete before moving onto the next
phase.

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Waterfall Model

• Inflexible partitioning of the project into distinct stages makes it

difficult to respond to changing customer requirements.
• this model is only appropriate when the requirements are well-understood
and changes will be fairly limited during the design process.
• Few business systems have stable requirements.

• The waterfall model is mostly used for large systems engineering

projects where a system is developed at several sites.
• In those circumstances, the plan-driven nature of the waterfall model helps
coordinate the work.

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Incremental development

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Incremental development benefits

• The cost of accommodating changing customer requirements is

reduced.
• The amount of analysis and documentation that has to be redone is much
less than is required with the waterfall model.
• It is easier to get customer feedback on the development work that
has been done.
• Customers can comment on demonstrations of the software and see how
much has been implemented.
• More rapid delivery and deployment of useful software to the
customer is possible.
• Customers are able to use and gain value from the software earlier than is
possible with a waterfall process.

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Incremental development problems

• The process is not visible.

• Managers need regular deliverables to measure progress. If systems are
developed quickly, it is not cost-effective to produce documents that reflect
every version of the system.
• System structure tends to degrade as new increments are added.
• Unless time and money is spent on refactoring to improve the software,
regular change tends to corrupt its structure. Incorporating further software
changes becomes increasingly difficult and costly.

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Integration and configuration

• Based on software reuse

• systems are integrated from existing components or application
systems (sometimes called COTS -Commercial-off-the-shelf) systems).
• Reused elements may be configured to adapt their behaviour and
functionality to a user’s requirements
• Reuse is now the standard approach for building many types of
business system.

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Types of reusable software

• Stand-alone application systems (sometimes called COTS) that are

configured for use in a particular environment.
• Collections of objects that are developed as a package to be
integrated with a component framework such as .NET or J2EE.
• Web services that are developed according to service standards and
which are available for remote invocation.

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Reuse-oriented software engineering

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Key process stages

• Requirements specification
• Software discovery and evaluation
• Requirements refinement
• Application system configuration
• Component adaptation and integration

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Advantages and disadvantages

• Reduced costs and risks as less software is developed from scratch

• Faster delivery and deployment of system
• requirements compromises are inevitable so system may not meet
real needs of users
• Loss of control over evolution of reused system elements

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Process activities

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Process activities

• Real software processes are inter-leaved sequences of technical,

collaborative and managerial activities with the overall goal of
specifying, designing, implementing and testing a software system.
• The four basic process activities of specification, development,
validation and evolution are organized differently in different
development processes.
• For example, in the waterfall model, they are organized in sequence,
whereas in incremental development they are interleaved.

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The requirements engineering process

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 Software specification
• The process of establishing what services are required and the constraints
on the system’s operation and development.
• Requirements engineering process
• Requirements elicitation and analysis
• What do the system stakeholders require or expect from the system?
• Requirements specification
• Defining the requirements in detail
• Requirements validation
• Checking the validity of the requirements

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Software design and implementation

• The process of converting the system specification into an executable

system.
• Software design
• Design a software structure that realises the specification;
• Implementation
• Translate this structure into an executable program;
• The activities of design and implementation are closely related and
may be inter-leaved.

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A general model of the design process

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Design activities

• Architectural design, where you identify the overall structure of the

system, the principal components (subsystems or modules), their
relationships and how they are distributed.
• Database design, where you design the system data structures and
how these are to be represented in a database.
• Interface design, where you define the interfaces between system
components.
• Component selection and design, where you search for reusable
components. If unavailable, you design how it will operate.

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System implementation

• The software is implemented either by developing a program or

programs or by configuring an application system.
• Design and implementation are interleaved activities for most types
of software system.
• Programming is an individual activity with no standard process.
• Debugging is the activity of finding program faults and correcting
these faults.

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Software validation

• Verification and validation (V & V) is intended to show that a system

conforms to its specification and meets the requirements of the
system customer.
• Verification process includes checking documents, design, code, and
program, whereas Validation process includes testing and validation
of the actual product.

• Testing is the most commonly used V & V activity.

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Testing stages

• Component testing
• Individual components are tested independently;
• Components may be functions or objects or coherent groupings of these
entities.
• System testing
• Testing of the system as a whole. Testing of emergent properties is
particularly important.
• Customer testing
• Testing with customer data to check that the system meets the customer’s
needs.

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Stages of testing

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Software evolution

• Software is inherently flexible and can change.

• As requirements change through changing business circumstances,
the software that supports the business must also evolve and change.
• Although there has been a demarcation between development and
evolution (maintenance) this is increasingly irrelevant as fewer and
fewer systems are completely new.

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System evolution

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