Group 3 - Software Process Activities and The Rational Unified Process
Four Primary Software Engineering Activities
1. Specification
- The process of establishing the requirements
4 Requirements Engineering process:
a. Feasibility study – is it technically and financially feasible to build the system?
b. Requirements elicitation and analysis – what do the customers/users require or expect from the
system?
c. Requirements specification – defining the requirements in detail and documenting them.
d. Requirements validation – checking them for clarity, consistency, completements, etc.
2. Development
- Converting the requirements into an executable system.
Software Design – design a software structure that realizes the specification.
Implementation – translate the design into an executable program.
Design Activities:
Architectural design – identify the overall structure of the system, the principal components,
their relationships and how they are distributed.
Interface design – define the interfaces between system components.
Component design – take each system component and design how it will operate.
Database design – design the system data structures and how these are to be represented in a
database.
3. Validation
Validation: are we building the right product?
Verification: are we building the product right?
Testing is the most commonly used V & V activities and includes the following stages:
Development or 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.
Acceptance testing: testing with customer data to check that the system meets the customer’s
needs.
4. Evolution
After the software has been released, it must be kept up to date.
- Customers require new functions
- Defects must be repaired
Rational Unified Process (RUP)
software engineering and development process focused on using the unified modeling language
(UML) to design and build software.
Created by Rational Corporation, which was later acquired by IBM.
Proposed by Ivar Jacobson, Grady Bootch, and James Rambaugh.
Characteristics include use-case drive, iterative, incremental nature, and hybrid model approach.
RUP is normally described with three different perspectives they are:
o A dynamic perspective
o A static perspective
o A practice perspective
RUP divides the development process into four phases:
o Inception: the scope of the project is defined, and feasibility is assessed. Goals and
Objectives of the project are also established.
o Elaboration: focuses on refining the project vision and scope. Detailed requirements
are identified, and a comprehensive project plan is developed.
o Construction: The actual development of the software takes place in this phase. The
software is designed, coded, and tested according to the project plan.
o Transition: This involved delivering the software to the customer. It includes eta
testing, user training.
Disciplines of RUP
Business Modelling
o The business processes are modeled using business use cases.
o The goal is to ensure that the software being developed aligns with the business
objectives.
Requirements
o Actors who interact with the system are identified and use cased are developed to model
the system requirements.
Design
o A design model is created and documented using architectural models, component
models, object models and sequence models.
o The goal is to create a blueprint for implementing the software solution.
Implementation
o The components in the system are implemented and structured into implementation sub-
systems.
o Automatic code generation from design models help accelerate this process.
Testing
o Testing is an iterative process that is carried out in conjunction with implementation.
System testing follows the completion of the implementation.
o The goal is to identify and fix defects early in the development process.
Deployment
o Product release is created, distributed to users and installed in their workplace.
o The goal is to ensure a smooth transition from development to production.
Project Management
o This supporting workflow manages the system development.
o The goal is to ensure is completed on time, within budget, and with the expected level of
quality.
