Chapter 2 – Software Processes

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Topics covered

 Software process models

 Process activities
 Software change
 Process improvement

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What happens when you work in cleanroom?

 This is for hardware cleanroom but also applies for

software.

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The software process

 A structured set of activities required to develop a

software system.
 A software process model is an abstract representation
of a process.
▪ The concepts and ideas that defined in a model that can be
applied to software engineering a product.

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The software process

 Many different software process but all involve:

▪ Specification/Requirements – defining what the system shoud
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.

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Software process descriptions

 Processes activities:
▪ specifying a requirements
▪ designing a user interface, , data models, object models, etc.
▪ 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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Software process models

 In the following slides, we will look at:

▪ Water fall

▪ Incremental development
• Agile development
• Incrementally planned

▪ Integration and configuration

Frequently, most large systems are developed using a
process that incorporates elements from all of these
models.

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The waterfall model

 Activities are planned in advance and progress is

measured against this plan.
 Separate and distinct phases of specification and
development.
▪ Each phase is completed before the next phase starts
▪ Phase shown on next slide

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The waterfall model

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Waterfall model problems

 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.

 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 system have stable requirements.
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Waterfall model usage

 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.

 The waterfall model is good for systems that need to be

successful the first time with no chance for an increment
▪ For example, Hubble Telescope
• All of the hardware and software willed be blasted into space.
• Incremental develop would be cost prohibitive because you sent the
last increment into space
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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 and delivery

 Incremental development
▪ Develop the system in increments and evaluate each increment
before proceeding to the development of the next increment;
▪ Agile is incremental by definition
▪ Evaluation done by user/customer proxy.
 Planning may be done in advance or as needed.
▪ In advance, requirements could be divided into incremental
deliverables for the customer.
▪ As needed, highest priority requirements are delivered. Then
the next highest priority items are addressed. This is called Agile
Development.

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Incremental development

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Incremental development and delivery

 Incremental delivery
▪ Deploy an increment for use by end-user;
▪ More realistic evaluation about practical use of software;
▪ Difficult to implement for replacement systems as increments
have less functionality than the system being replaced.

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Incremental delivery

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Incremental delivery advantages

 Customer value can be delivered with each increment so

system functionality is available earlier.
▪ Customers are able to use and gain value from the software
earlier than is possible with a waterfall process
 The highest priority system services tend to receive the
most testing
 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.

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Incremental development benefits

 Early increments act as a prototype to help elicit

requirements for later increments.

 It is easier to get customer feedback on the development

work that has been done.
▪ Customers will be using the software and will be able to
communicate any problems

 Low risk of overall project failure.

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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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Incremental development 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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Integration and configuration

 The system is assembled from existing configurable

components.

 Based on software reuse.

 For example:
▪ Web-service
▪ Component frameworks(J2EE,.NET)
▪ Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) products
• SAP – business software with configurable modules

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Integration and configuration
Reuse-oriented software engineering

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Integration and configuration
Benefits and problems

 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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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

activities including:
▪ Technical
▪ Collaborative
▪ Managerial

 With the goal of producing a software systems through:

▪ Specifying
▪ Designing
▪ Implementing
▪ Testing a software system.

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Process activities

 The four basic process activities are:

1. Specification (Requirements)
2. Development (Design & Implementation)
3. Validation (Testing)
4. Evolution (Maintenance)

 This course will go into depth on each of these basis

activities and how they are performed in the different
software model.

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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.
 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

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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)

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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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 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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Software prototyping

 A prototype is an initial version of a system used to

demonstrate concepts and try out design options.
 A prototype can be used in:
▪ The requirements engineering process to help with requirements
elicitation and validation;
▪ In design processes to explore options and develop a UI design;
▪ In the testing process to run back-to-back tests.

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Benefits of prototyping

 Improved system usability.

 A closer match to users’ real needs.
 Improved design quality.
 Improved maintainability.
 Reduced development effort.

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The process of prototype development

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Prototype development

 May be based on rapid prototyping languages or tools

 May involve leaving out functionality
▪ Prototype should focus on areas of the product that are not well-
understood;
▪ Error checking and recovery may not be included in the
prototype;
▪ Focus on functional rather than non-functional requirements
such as reliability and security

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Throw-away prototypes

 Prototypes should be discarded after development as

they are not a good basis for a production system:
▪ It may be impossible to tune the system to meet non-functional
requirements;
▪ Prototypes are normally undocumented;
▪ The prototype structure is usually degraded through rapid
change;
▪ The prototype probably will not meet normal organisational
quality standards.

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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 development and delivery

 Incremental development
▪ Develop the system in increments and evaluate each increment
before proceeding to the development of the next increment;
▪ Normal approach used in agile methods;
▪ Evaluation done by user/customer proxy.
 Incremental delivery
▪ Deploy an increment for use by end-users;
▪ More realistic evaluation about practical use of software;
▪ Difficult to implement for replacement systems as increments
have less functionality than the system being replaced.

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Incremental delivery

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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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The process improvement cycle

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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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Capability maturity levels

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The SEI capability maturity model

 Initial
▪ Essentially uncontrolled
 Repeatable
▪ Product management procedures defined and used
 Defined
▪ Process management procedures and strategies defined
and used
 Managed
▪ Quality management strategies defined and used
 Optimising
▪ Process improvement strategies defined and used
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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.
 The SEI process maturity framework identifies maturity
levels that essentially correspond to the use of good
software engineering practice.

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