Software Processes

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 1

 Objectives
 To introduce software process models
 To describe three generic process models and
when they may be used
 To describe outline process models for
requirements engineering, software
development, testing and evolution
 To explain the Rational Unified Process model
 To introduce CASE technology to support
software process activities

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 2

 Topics covered

 Software process models

 Process iteration
 Process activities
 The Rational Unified Process
 Computer-aided software engineering

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 3

 The software process
 A structured set of activities required to develop a
software system
• Specification;
• Design;
• Development;
• Validation;
• Evolution.
 A software process model is an abstract representation
of a process. It presents a description of a process
from some particular perspective.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 4

 Generic software process models
 The waterfall model
• Separate and distinct phases of specification and
development.
 Evolutionary development
• Specification, development and validation are
interleaved or iterated.
 Component-based software engineering
• The system is assembled from existing components.
 There are many variants of these models e.g. formal
development where a waterfall-like process is used but
the specification is a formal specification that is refined
through several stages to an implementable design.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 5

 Waterfall model

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 6

 Waterfall model phases
 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. One phase has to be
complete before moving onto the next phase.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 7

 Waterfall model problems
 Inflexible partitioning of the project into distinct stages
makes it difficult to respond to changing customer
requirements.
 Therefore, 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.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 8

 Evolutionary development

 Exploratory development
• Objective is to work with customers and to evolve
a final system from an initial outline specification.
Should start with well-understood requirements
and add new features as proposed by the
customer.
 Throw-away prototyping
• Objective is to understand the system
requirements. Should start with poorly understood
requirements to clarify what is really needed.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 9

 Evolutionary development

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 10

 Evolutionary development
 Problems
• Lack of process visibility;
• Systems are often poorly structured;
• Special skills may be required.
 Applicability
• For small or medium-size interactive systems;
• For parts of large systems (e.g. the user interface);
• For short-lifetime systems.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 11

 Component-based software engineering

 Based on systematic reuse where systems are

integrated from existing components or COTS
(Commercial-off-the-shelf) systems.
 Process stages
• Component analysis;
• Requirements modification;
• System design with reuse;
• Development and integration.
 This approach is becoming increasingly used
as component standards have emerged.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 12

 Reuse-oriented development

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 13

 Process iteration

 System requirements ALWAYS evolve in the

course of a project so process iteration where
earlier stages are reworked is always part of
the process for large systems.
 Iteration can be applied to any of the generic
process models.
 Two (related) approaches
• Incremental delivery;
• Spiral development.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 14

 Incremental delivery
 Rather than deliver the system as a single delivery, the
development and delivery is broken down into
increments with each increment delivering part of the
required functionality.
 User requirements are prioritised and the highest
priority requirements are included in early increments.
 Once the development of an increment is started, the
requirements are frozen though requirements for later
increments can continue to evolve.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 15

 Incremental development

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 16

 Incremental development advantages

 Customer value can be delivered with each

increment so system functionality is available
earlier.
 Early increments act as a prototype to help
elicit requirements for later increments.
 Lower risk of overall project failure.
 The highest priority system services tend to
receive the most testing.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 17

 Extreme programming

 An approach to development based on the

development and delivery of very small
increments of functionality.
 Relies on constant code improvement, user
involvement in the development team and
pair-wise programming.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 18

 Spiral development

 Process is represented as a spiral rather than

as a sequence of activities with backtracking.
 Each loop in the spiral represents a phase in
the process.
 No fixed phases such as specification or
design - loops in the spiral are chosen
depending on what is required.
 Risks are explicitly assessed and resolved
throughout the process.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 19

Spiral model of the software process

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 20

 Spiral model sectors
 Objective setting
• Specific objectives for the phase are identified.
 Risk assessment and reduction
• Risks are assessed and activities put in place to reduce
the key risks.
 Development and validation
• A development model for the system is chosen which
can be any of the generic models.
 Planning
• The project is reviewed and the next phase of the spiral
is planned.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 21

 Process activities

 Software specification
 Software design and implementation
 Software validation
 Software evolution

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 22

 Software specification

 The process of establishing what services are

required and the constraints on the system’s
operation and development.
 Requirements engineering process
• Feasibility study;
• Requirements elicitation and analysis;
• Requirements specification;
• Requirements validation.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 23

 The requirements engineering process

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 24

 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.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 25

 Design process activities

 Architectural design ( sub systems identification)

 Abstract specification (services and constrains)
 Interface design ( sub systems to sub systems)
 Component design ( services and interfaces)
 Data structure design
 Algorithm design

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 26

 The software design process

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 27

 Structured methods
 Systematic approaches to developing a
software design.
 The design is usually documented as a set of
graphical models.
 Possible models
• Object model;
• Sequence model;
• State transition model;
• Structural model;
• Data-flow model.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 28

 Programming and debugging

 Translating a design into a program and

removing errors from that program.
 Programming is a personal activity - there is
no generic programming process.
 Programmers carry out some program testing
to discover faults in the program and remove
these faults in the debugging process.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 29

 The debugging process

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 30

 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.
 Involves checking and review processes and
system testing.
 System testing involves executing the system
with test cases that are derived from the
specification of the real data.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 31

 The testing process

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 32

 Testing stages
 Component or unit 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.
 Acceptance testing
• Testing with customer data to check that the
system meets the customer’s needs.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 33

 Testing phases

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 34

 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.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 35

 System evolution

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 36

 The Rational Unified Process

 A modern process model derived from the

work on the UML and associated process.
 Normally described from 3 perspectives
• A dynamic perspective that shows phases over
time;
• A static perspective that shows process activities;
• A practice perspective that suggests good
practice.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 37

 RUP phases

 Inception
• Establish the business case for the system.
 Elaboration
• Develop an understanding of the problem domain
and the system architecture.
 Construction
• System design, programming and testing.
 Transition
• Deploy the system in its operating environment.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 38

 RUP phase model

Phase iteration

Inception Elaboration Construction Transition

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 39

 Computer-aided software engineering

 Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) is

software to support software development and
evolution processes.
 Activity automation
• Graphical editors for system model development;
• Data dictionary to manage design entities;
• Graphical UI builder for user interface construction;
• Debuggers to support program fault finding;
• Automated translators to generate new versions of a
program.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 40

 Case technology

 Case technology has led to significant

improvements in the software process.
However, these are not the order of magnitude
improvements that were once predicted
• Software engineering requires creative thought -
this is not readily automated;
• Software engineering is a team activity and, for
large projects, much time is spent in team
interactions. CASE technology does not really
support these.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 41

 CASE classification
 Classification helps us understand the different types
of CASE tools and their support for process activities.
 Functional perspective
• Tools are classified according to their specific function.
 Process perspective
• Tools are classified according to process activities that
are supported.
 Integration perspective
• Tools are classified according to their organisation into
integrated units.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 42

 Key points
 Software processes are the activities involved in
producing and evolving a software system.
 Software process models are abstract representations
of these processes.
 General activities are specification, design and
implementation, validation and evolution.
 Generic process models describe the organisation of
software processes. Examples include the waterfall
model, evolutionary development and component-
based software engineering.
 Iterative process models describe the software process
as a cycle of activities.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 43

 Key points
 Requirements engineering is the process of developing
a software specification.
 Design and implementation processes transform the
specification to an executable program.
 Validation involves checking that the system meets to
its specification and user needs.
 Evolution is concerned with modifying the system after
it is in use.
 The Rational Unified Process is a generic process
model that separates activities from phases.
 CASE technology supports software process activities.

©Ian Sommerville 2004 Software Engineering, 7th edition. Chapter 4 Slide 44