Software Processes and Software
Development Process Models
CS413 - Software Engineering Project Management
Department of Computer Engineering, Bilkent University
Dr. Mustafa Değerli
Chapter 2 – Software
Processes
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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
• When we describe and discuss processes, we usually talk about the
activities in these processes such as 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
Requirements
definition
System and
software design
Implementation
and unit testing
Integration and
system testing
Operation and
maintenance
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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 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.
• In those circumstances, the plan-driven nature of the waterfall model helps
coordinate the work.
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Incremental development
Concurrent
activities
Initial
Specification version
Outline Intermediate
description Development versions
Final
Validation version
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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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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
Application system Configure
Software available application
discovery system
Requirements Requirements
specification refinement Adapt
components
Software Integrate
evaluation Components system
available Develop new
components
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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
• But 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
Requirements
elicitation and
analysis
Requirements
specification
Requirements
validation
System
descriptions
User and system
requirements
Requirements
document
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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
Design inputs
Platform Requirements Data
information specification description
Design activities
Architectural Interface Component
design design design
Database design
Design outputs
System Database Interface Component
architecture specification specification specification
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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.
• 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 to be processed by the
system.
• Testing is the most commonly used V & V activity.
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Stages of testing
Component Acceptance
System testing
testing testing
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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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Testing phases in a plan-driven software
process (V-model)
Requirements System System Detailed
specification specification design design
System Sub-system Module and
Acceptance
integration integration unit code
test plan and test
test plan test plan
Acceptance System Sub-system
Service
test integration test integration test
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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
Define system Assess existing Propose system Modify
requirements systems changes systems
Existing New
systems system
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Coping with change
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Coping with change
• Change is inevitable in all large software projects.
• Business changes lead to new and changed system requirements
• New technologies open up new possibilities for improving implementations
• Changing platforms require application changes
• Change leads to rework so the costs of change include both rework
(e.g. re-analysing requirements) as well as the costs of implementing
new functionality
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Reducing the costs of rework
• Change anticipation, where the software process includes activities
that can anticipate possible changes before significant rework is
required.
• For example, a prototype system may be developed to show some key
features of the system to customers.
• Change tolerance, where the process is designed so that changes can
be accommodated at relatively low cost.
• This normally involves some form of incremental development. Proposed
changes may be implemented in increments that have not yet been
developed. If this is impossible, then only a single increment (a small part of
the system) may have be altered to incorporate the change.
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Coping with changing requirements
• System prototyping, where a version of the system or part of the
system is developed quickly to check the customer’s requirements
and the feasibility of design decisions. This approach supports change
anticipation.
• Incremental delivery, where system increments are delivered to the
customer for comment and experimentation. This supports both
change avoidance and change tolerance.
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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.
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Incremental delivery
Define outline Assign requirements Design system Develop system
requirements to increments architecture increment
System
incomplete?
Validate Integrate Validate Deploy
increment increment system increment
System
complete?
Final
system
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Incremental delivery 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.
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Incremental delivery problems
• Most systems require a set of basic facilities that are used by different
parts of the system.
• As requirements are not defined in detail until an increment is to be
implemented, it can be hard to identify common facilities that are needed by all
increments.
• The essence of iterative processes is that the specification is developed
in conjunction with the software.
• However, this conflicts with the procurement model of many organizations,
where the complete system specification is part of the system development
contract.
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Process improvement
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Process improvement
• Many software companies have turned to software process
improvement as a way of enhancing the quality of their software,
reducing costs or accelerating their development processes.
• Process improvement means understanding existing processes and
changing these processes to increase product quality and/or reduce
costs and development time.
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Approaches to improvement
• The process maturity approach, which focuses on improving process
and project management and introducing good software engineering
practice.
• The level of process maturity reflects the extent to which good technical and
management practice has been adopted in organizational software
development processes.
• The agile approach, which focuses on iterative development and the
reduction of overheads in the software process.
• The primary characteristics of agile methods are rapid delivery of
functionality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements.
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Process improvement activities
• Process measurement
• You measure one or more attributes of the software process or product.
These measurements forms a baseline that helps you decide if process
improvements have been effective.
• Process analysis
• The current process is assessed, and process weaknesses and bottlenecks are
identified. Process models (sometimes called process maps) that describe
the process may be developed.
• Process change
• Process changes are proposed to address some of the identified process
weaknesses. These are introduced and the cycle resumes to collect data
about the effectiveness of the changes.
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Process measurement
• Wherever possible, quantitative process data
should be collected
• However, where organisations do not have clearly defined process
standards this is very difficult as you don’t know what to measure. A
process may have to be defined before any measurement is possible.
• Process measurements should be used to
assess process improvements
• But this does not mean that measurements should drive the
improvements. The improvement driver should be the organizational
objectives.
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Process metrics
• Time taken for process activities to be
completed
• E.g. Calendar time or effort to complete an activity or process.
• Resources required for processes or activities
• E.g. Total effort in person-days.
• Number of occurrences of a particular event
• E.g. Number of defects discovered.
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Key points
• Software processes are the activities involved in producing a
software system. Software process models are abstract
representations of these processes.
• General process models describe the organization of software
processes.
• Examples of these general models include the ‘waterfall’ model, incremental
development, and reuse-oriented development.
• Requirements engineering is the process of developing a software
specification.
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Key points
• Design and implementation processes are concerned with
transforming a requirements specification into an executable
software system.
• Software validation is the process of checking that the system
conforms to its specification and that it meets the real needs of the
users of the system.
• Software evolution takes place when you change existing software
systems to meet new requirements. The software must evolve to
remain useful.
• Processes should include activities such as prototyping and
incremental delivery to cope with change.
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Key points
• Processes may be structured for iterative development and delivery
so that changes may be made without disrupting the system as a
whole.
• The principal approaches to process improvement are agile
approaches, geared to reducing process overheads, and maturity-
based approaches based on better process management and the use
of good software engineering practice.
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Software Engineering Project Management
Software Processes and Software Development Process Models
References
• Software Engineering, 10th Edition, Ian
Sommerville
Software Processes and Software
Development Process Models
CS413 - Software Engineering Project Management
Department of Computer Engineering, Bilkent University
Dr. Mustafa Değerli
