The Software Development Process

After selecting a Process Model for your business it is necessary to utilize it. This first means to
define the overall Product Life Cycle with its engineering disciplines and phases. The next step
would be to define detailed activities within each of the phases. The documents and other work
products that shall be an outcome of the activities have to be defined in the next step. In many
cases, it is necessary to define several development processes that interact, rather than a single
one. Depending on the product that has to be developed development processes for mechanical
engineering, electronic engineering and software engineering are required. Only the projects that
have the task to develop software for a given system environment can do with a simple Software
Development Process.

If you have to develop a complete system you usually need the following interacting Process
Models:

 An overall Product Life Cycle that constitutes the framework for the following
individual process models:
 A System Development Process to describe the activities that have to be performed in
System Engineering. This engineering discipline is responsible for the overall design of
the system. Eventually this discipline has to decide what shall be done in hardware and
what in software, distribution of the computing power over several computer boards or
components, their interfaces etc. This discipline will be also responsible for the overall
project planning, system integration and system validation.
 A Hardware Development Process to describe the activities that have to be performed
in Hardware Engineering. This engineering discipline will design computing hardware as
for example in projects that use any kind of controller boards. If hardware is bought of
the shelf this discipline should be responsible for their selection and acceptance testing.
 A Software Development Process that defines in detail all activities that have to be
performed to establish and test the software.
 A Mechanical Development Process that defines the activities that have to be performed
by the mechanics engineering discipline. This is of course only in case the product needs
some own mechanical design such as a housing or a base frame.
 Other processes like procurement, sales, manufacturing etc. may need to be defined to
run a big project successfully and to suffice the needs of larger organizations.

As you can see, it is in many cases not as easy as just selecting a process model for software
development. Usually there is complete process landscape that has to be carefully designed. The
involved disciplines have different needs. For example mechanical engineering should rather use
a traditional approach similar to the waterfall model, whereas it may be wise to select a more
agile approach for software engineering. There are only a hand full of basic process models and
hundreds of variations of these models. You may need to define your own variation to have an
optimized process matching your products. By selecting the best process model for your
product's engineering disciplines and phases in the Product Life Cycle you can influence:

 Product quality and safety

 Documentation effort
 Development speed
 Administrative overhead
 Project risks
 Interaction with customer and suppliers

After you selected appropriate process models you should define the activities in detail,
including the roles responsible to carry out the activities and the expected work products of each
activity. This is the work of a professional process engineer. To give you an idea about such a
process description you can look at the following Document. Besides an editable version of this
document there is also a complete set of templates available on our

The Waterfall Model

The waterfall model is believed to have been the first process model which was introduced and
widely followed in software engineering. The innovation was that the first time software
engineering was divided into separate phases. When I did my first programs in PL/1 and RPG in
the early 1970's there was no awareness of splitting up software development into different
phases. Programs were very small, the requirements only a few and after punching a pile of cards
the program was done and could be tested by inserting it into the card reader and observing what
it did.
As programs became bigger the need for a better requirements phase, some more thoughts on the
design, etc. were needed. Programmers found it more and more difficult to keep an abstract of
the program in their mind and transfer it into code. Also the thought of having a separate testing
phase performed by dedicated testers evolved. The different phases of software engineering were
identified and simply cascaded in each other, allowing for loops in case it was found in a
subsequent phase that the previous phase was not done properly.
The phases of "The Waterfall Model" are:

Requirement Analysis & Definition: All requirements of the system which has to be developed
are collected in this step. Like in other process models requirements are split up in functional
requirements and constraints which the system has to fulfil. Requirements have to be collected
by analysing the needs of the end user(s) and checking them for validity and the possibility to
implement them. The aim is to generate a Requirements Specification Document which is used
as an input for the next phase of the model.

System Design: The system has to be properly designed before any implementation is started.
This involves an architectural design which defines and describes the main blocks and
components of the system, their interfaces and interactions. By this the needed hardware is
defined and the software is split up in its components. E.g. this involves the definition or
selection of a computer platform, an operating system, other peripheral hardware, etc. The
software components have to be defined to meet the end user requirements and to meet the need
of possible scalability of the system. The aim of this phase is to generate a System Architecture
Document this serves as an input for the software design phase of the development, but also as
an input for hardware design or selection activities. Usually in this phase various documents are
generated, one for each discipline, so that the software usually will receive a software
architecture document.

Software Design: Based on the system architecture which defines the main software blocks the
software design will break them further down into code modules. The interfaces and interactions
of the modules are described, as well as their functional contents. All necessary system states
like startup, shutdown, error conditions and diagnostic modes have to be considered and the
activity and behaviour of the software has to be defined. The output of this phase is a Software
Design Document which is the base of the following implementation work.

Coding: Based on the software design document the work is aiming to set up the defined
modules or units and actual coding is started. The system is first developed in smaller portions
called units. They are able to stand alone from an functional aspect and are integrated later on to
form the complete software package.

Software Integration & Verification: Each unit is developed independently and can be tested for
its functionality. This is the so called Unit Testing. It simply verifies if the modules or units to
check if they meet their specifications. This involves functional tests at the interfaces of the
modules, but also more detailed tests which consider the inner structure of the software modules.
During integration the units which are developed and tested for their functionalities are brought
together. The modules are integrated into a complete system and tested to check if all modules
cooperate as expected.

System Validation: After successfully integration including the related tests the complete system
has to be tested against its initial requirements. This will include the original hardware and
environment, whereas the previous integration and testing phase may still be performed in a
different environment or on a test bench.
Operation & Maintenance: The system is handed over to the customer and will be used the first
time by him. Naturally the customer will check if his requirements were implemented as
expected but he will also validate if the correct requirements have been set up in the beginning.
In case there are changes necessary it has to be fixed to make the system usable or to make it
comply to the customer wishes. In most of the "Waterfall Model" descriptions this phase is
extended to a never ending phase of "Operations & Maintenance". All the problems which did
not arise during the previous phases will be solved in this last phase.

The weakness of the Waterfall Model is at hand:

 It is very important to gather all possible requirements during the first phase of
requirements collection and analysis. If not all requirements are obtained at once the
subsequent phases will suffer from it. Reality is that only a part of the requirements is
known at the beginning and a certain percentage will be gathered during the complete
development time.
 Iterations are only meant to happen within the same phase or at best from the start of the
subsequent phase back to the previous phase. If the process is kept according to the
school book this tends to shift the solution of problems into later phases which eventually
results in a bad system design. Instead of solving the root causes the tendency is to patch
problems with inadequate measures.
 There may be a very big "Maintenance" phase at the end. The process only allows for a
single run through the waterfall. Eventually this could be only a first sample phase which
means that the further development is squeezed into the last never ending maintenance
phase and virtually run without a proper process.

What is a Software Process Model?

A Process Model describes the sequence of phases for the entire lifetime of a product. Therefore
it is sometimes also called Product Life Cycle. This covers everything from the initial
commercial idea until the final de-installation or disassembling of the product after its use.

Usually there are three main phases:

  concept phase
 implementation phase
 maintenance phase

Each of these main phases usually has some sub-phases, like a requirement engineering phase, a
design phase, a build phase and a testing phase. The sub-phases may occur in more than one
main phase each of them with a specific peculiarity depending on the main phase.

Besides the phases a Process Model shall also define at least:

 The activities that have to be carried out in each of the sub-phases, including the
sequence in which these activities have to be carried out.
 The roles of the executors that have to carry out the activities, including a description of
their responsibilities and required skills.
 The work products that have to be established or updated in each of the activities.
Besides the final product there are usually several other items that have to be generated
during the development of a product. These are for example requirements and design
document, test specifications and test reports, etc.

Therefore, a Process Model provides a fixed framework that guides a project in:

 Development of the product

 Planning and organizing the project
 Tracking and running the project

Software Project Management

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The job pattern of an IT company engaged in software development can be seen split in two
parts:

 Software Creation
 Software Project Management

A project is well-defined task, which is a collection of several operations done in order to

achieve a goal (for example, software development and delivery). A Project can be characterized
as:

 Every project may has a unique and distinct goal.

 Project is not routine activity or day-to-day operations.
 Project comes with a start time and end time.
 Project ends when its goal is achieved hence it is a temporary phase in the lifetime of an
organization.
 Project needs adequate resources in terms of time, manpower, finance, material and
knowledge-bank.

Software Project

A Software Project is the complete procedure of software development from requirement

gathering to testing and maintenance, carried out according to the execution methodologies, in a
specified period of time to achieve intended software product.

Need of software project management

Software is said to be an intangible product. Software development is a kind of all new stream in
world business and there’s very little experience in building software products. Most software
products are tailor made to fit client’s requirements. The most important is that the underlying
technology changes and advances so frequently and rapidly that experience of one product may
not be applied to the other one. All such business and environmental constraints bring risk in
software development hence it is essential to manage software projects efficiently.

The image above shows triple constraints for software projects. It is an essential part of software
organization to deliver quality product, keeping the cost within client’s budget constrain and
deliver the project as per scheduled. There are several factors, both internal and external, which
may impact this triple constrain triangle. Any of three factor can severely impact the other two.

Therefore, software project management is essential to incorporate user requirements along with
budget and time constraints.

Software Project Manager

A software project manager is a person who undertakes the responsibility of executing the
software project. Software project manager is thoroughly aware of all the phases of SDLC that
the software would go through. Project manager may never directly involve in producing the end
product but he controls and manages the activities involved in production.

A project manager closely monitors the development process, prepares and executes various
plans, arranges necessary and adequate resources, maintains communication among all team
members in order to address issues of cost, budget, resources, time, quality and customer
satisfaction.

Let us see few responsibilities that a project manager shoulders -

Managing People

 Act as project leader

 Liaison with stakeholders
 Managing human resources
 Setting up reporting hierarchy etc.

Managing Project

 Defining and setting up project scope

 Managing project management activities
 Monitoring progress and performance
 Risk analysis at every phase
 Take necessary step to avoid or come out of problems
 Act as project spokesperson

Software Management Activities

Software project management comprises of a number of activities, which contains planning of

project, deciding scope of software product, estimation of cost in various terms, scheduling of
tasks and events, and resource management. Project management activities may include:

 Project Planning
 Scope Management
 Project Estimation
Project Planning

Software project planning is task, which is performed before the production of software actually
starts. It is there for the software production but involves no concrete activity that has any
direction connection with software production; rather it is a set of multiple processes, which
facilitates software production. Project planning may include the following:

Scope Management

It defines the scope of project; this includes all the activities, process need to be done in order to
make a deliverable software product. Scope management is essential because it creates
boundaries of the project by clearly defining what would be done in the project and what would
not be done. This makes project to contain limited and quantifiable tasks, which can easily be
documented and in turn avoids cost and time overrun.

During Project Scope management, it is necessary to -

 Define the scope

 Decide its verification and control
 Divide the project into various smaller parts for ease of management.
 Verify the scope
 Control the scope by incorporating changes to the scope

Project Estimation

For an effective management accurate estimation of various measures is a must. With correct
estimation managers can manage and control the project more efficiently and effectively.

Project estimation may involve the following:

 Software size estimation

Software size may be estimated either in terms of KLOC (Kilo Line of Code) or by
calculating number of function points in the software. Lines of code depend upon coding
practices and Function points vary according to the user or software requirement.

 Effort estimation

The managers estimate efforts in terms of personnel requirement and man-hour required
to produce the software. For effort estimation software size should be known. This can
either be derived by managers’ experience, organization’s historical data or software size
can be converted into efforts by using some standard formulae.

 Time estimation
 Once size and efforts are estimated, the time required to produce the software can be
estimated. Efforts required is segregated into sub categories as per the requirement
specifications and interdependency of various components of software. Software tasks
are divided into smaller tasks, activities or events by Work Breakthrough Structure
(WBS). The tasks are scheduled on day-to-day basis or in calendar months.

The sum of time required to complete all tasks in hours or days is the total time invested
to complete the project.

 Cost estimation

This might be considered as the most difficult of all because it depends on more elements
than any of the previous ones. For estimating project cost, it is required to consider -

o Size of software
o Software quality
o Hardware
o Additional software or tools, licenses etc.
o Skilled personnel with task-specific skills
o Travel involved
o Communication
o Training and support

Project Estimation Techniques

We discussed various parameters involving project estimation such as size, effort, time and cost.

Project manager can estimate the listed factors using two broadly recognized techniques –

Decomposition Technique

This technique assumes the software as a product of various compositions.

There are two main models -

 Line of Code Estimation is done on behalf of number of line of codes in the software product.
 Function Points Estimation is done on behalf of number of function points in the software
product.

Empirical Estimation Technique

This technique uses empirically derived formulae to make estimation.These formulae are based
on LOC or FPs.

 Putnam Model
 This model is made by Lawrence H. Putnam, which is based on Norden’s frequency
distribution (Rayleigh curve). Putnam model maps time and efforts required with
software size.

 COCOMO

COCOMO stands for COnstructive COst MOdel, developed by Barry W. Boehm. It

divides the software product into three categories of software: organic, semi-detached and
embedded.

Project Scheduling

Project Scheduling in a project refers to roadmap of all activities to be done with specified order
and within time slot allotted to each activity. Project managers tend to define various tasks, and
project milestones and they arrange these keeping various factors in mind. They look for tasks lie
in critical path in the schedule, which are necessary to complete in specific manner (because of
task interdependency) and strictly within the time allocated. The arrangement of tasks which lie
out of critical path are less likely to impact over all schedule of the project.

For scheduling a project, it is necessary to -

 Break down the project tasks into smaller, manageable form

 Find out various tasks and correlate them
 Estimate time frame required for each task
 Divide time into work-units
 Assign adequate number of work-units for each task
 Calculate total time required for the project from start to finish

Resource management

All elements used to develop a software product may be assumed as resource for that project.
This may include human resource, productive tools and software libraries.

The resources are available in limited quantity and stay in the organization as a pool of assets.
The shortage of resources hampers the development of project and it can lag behind the schedule.
Allocating extra resources increases development cost in the end. It is therefore necessary to
estimate and allocate adequate resources for the project.

Resource management includes -

 Defining proper organization project by creating a project team and allocating responsibilities to
each team member
 Determining resources required at a particular stage and their availability
 Manage Resources by generating resource request when they are required and de-allocating
them when they are no more needed.
Project Risk Management

Risk management involves all activities pertaining to identification, analyzing and making
provision for predictable and non-predictable risks in the project. Risk may include the
following:

 Experienced staff leaving the project and new staff coming in.
 Change in organizational management.
 Requirement change or misinterpreting requirement.
 Under-estimation of required time and resources.
 Technological changes, environmental changes, business competition.

Risk Management Process

There are following activities involved in risk management process:

 Identification - Make note of all possible risks, which may occur in the project.
 Categorize - Categorize known risks into high, medium and low risk intensity as per their
possible impact on the project.
 Manage - Analyze the probability of occurrence of risks at various phases. Make plan to avoid or
face risks. Attempt to minimize their side-effects.
 Monitor - Closely monitor the potential risks and their early symptoms. Also monitor the effects
of steps taken to mitigate or avoid them.

Project Execution & Monitoring

In this phase, the tasks described in project plans are executed according to their schedules.

Execution needs monitoring in order to check whether everything is going according to the plan.
Monitoring is observing to check the probability of risk and taking measures to address the risk
or report the status of various tasks.

These measures include -

 Activity Monitoring - All activities scheduled within some task can be monitored on day-to-day
basis. When all activities in a task are completed, it is considered as complete.
 Status Reports - The reports contain status of activities and tasks completed within a given time
frame, generally a week. Status can be marked as finished, pending or work-in-progress etc.
 Milestones Checklist - Every project is divided into multiple phases where major tasks are
performed (milestones) based on the phases of SDLC. This milestone checklist is prepared once
every few weeks and reports the status of milestones.
Project Communication Management

Effective communication plays vital role in the success of a project. It bridges gaps between
client and the organization, among the team members as well as other stake holders in the project
such as hardware suppliers.

Communication can be oral or written. Communication management process may have the
following steps:

 Planning - This step includes the identifications of all the stakeholders in the project and the
mode of communication among them. It also considers if any additional communication facilities
are required.
 Sharing - After determining various aspects of planning, manager focuses on sharing correct
information with the correct person on correct time. This keeps every one involved the project
up to date with project progress and its status.
 Feedback - Project managers use various measures and feedback mechanism and create status
and performance reports. This mechanism ensures that input from various stakeholders is
coming to the project manager as their feedback.
 Closure - At the end of each major event, end of a phase of SDLC or end of the project itself,
administrative closure is formally announced to update every stakeholder by sending email, by
distributing a hardcopy of document or by other mean of effective communication.

After closure, the team moves to next phase or project.

Configuration Management

Configuration management is a process of tracking and controlling the changes in software in

terms of the requirements, design, functions and development of the product.

IEEE defines it as “the process of identifying and defining the items in the system, controlling
the change of these items throughout their life cycle, recording and reporting the status of items
and change requests, and verifying the completeness and correctness of items”.

Generally, once the SRS is finalized there is less chance of requirement of changes from user. If
they occur, the changes are addressed only with prior approval of higher management, as there is
a possibility of cost and time overrun.

Baseline

A phase of SDLC is assumed over if it baselined, i.e. baseline is a measurement that defines
completeness of a phase. A phase is baselined when all activities pertaining to it are finished and
well documented. If it was not the final phase, its output would be used in next immediate phase.

Configuration management is a discipline of organization administration, which takes care of

occurrence of any change (process, requirement, technological, strategical etc.) after a phase is
baselined. CM keeps check on any changes done in software.
Change Control

Change control is function of configuration management, which ensures that all changes made to
software system are consistent and made as per organizational rules and regulations.

A change in the configuration of product goes through following steps -

 Identification - A change request arrives from either internal or external source. When
change request is identified formally, it is properly documented.
 Validation - Validity of the change request is checked and its handling procedure is
confirmed.
 Analysis - The impact of change request is analyzed in terms of schedule, cost and
required efforts. Overall impact of the prospective change on system is analyzed.
 Control - If the prospective change either impacts too many entities in the system or it is
unavoidable, it is mandatory to take approval of high authorities before change is
incorporated into the system. It is decided if the change is worth incorporation or not. If it
is not, change request is refused formally.
 Execution - If the previous phase determines to execute the change request, this phase
take appropriate actions to execute the change, does a thorough revision if necessary.
 Close request - The change is verified for correct implementation and merging with the
rest of the system. This newly incorporated change in the software is documented
properly and the request is formally is closed.

Project Management Tools

The risk and uncertainty rises multifold with respect to the size of the project, even when the
project is developed according to set methodologies.

There are tools available, which aid for effective project management. A few are described -

Gantt Chart

Gantt charts was devised by Henry Gantt (1917). It represents project schedule with respect to
time periods. It is a horizontal bar chart with bars representing activities and time scheduled for
the project activities.
PERT Chart

PERT (Program Evaluation & Review Technique) chart is a tool that depicts project as network
diagram. It is capable of graphically representing main events of project in both parallel and
consecutive way. Events, which occur one after another, show dependency of the later event over
the previous one.

Events are shown as numbered nodes. They are connected by labeled arrows depicting sequence
of tasks in the project.

Resource Histogram

This is a graphical tool that contains bar or chart representing number of resources (usually
skilled staff) required over time for a project event (or phase). Resource Histogram is an
effective tool for staff planning and coordination.
Critical Path Analysis

This tools is useful in recognizing interdependent tasks in the project. It also helps to find out the
shortest path or critical path to complete the project successfully. Like PERT diagram, each
event is allotted a specific time frame. This tool shows dependency of event assuming an event
can proceed to next only if the previous one is completed.

The events are arranged according to their earliest possible start time. Path between start and end
node is critical path which cannot be further reduced and all events require to be executed in
same order.

Software prototyping is the activity of creating prototypes of software applications, i.e., incomplete
versions of the software program being developed. It is an activity that can occur in software
development and is comparable to prototyping as known from other fields, such as mechanical
engineering or manufacturing.
Software prototyping - Wikipedia
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The Prototyping Model is a systems development method (SDM) in which a prototype (an early
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Jump to Dynamic systems development method - Software prototyping is the activity of creating
prototypes of software applications, i.e., incomplete versions of the software program being developed.
It is an activity that can occur in software development and is comparable to prototyping as known from
other fields, such as mechanical engineering or manufacturing.

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Some notes for Software Engineering -- Introduction

by Herbert J. Bernstein © Copyright Herbert J. Bernstein, 1999, 2002, 2005

Introduction

Software Engineering is the subdiscipline of Computer Science that attempts

to apply engineering principles to the creation, operation, modification and
maintenance of the software components of various systems. As with much of
Computer Science, the subject of Software Engineering is at an very early
stage in its development. It is much more of an art than a science, and at
present has little in common which classical engineering.

 What is engineering?

Engineering is the application of well-understood scientific methods to

the construction, operation, modification and maintenance of useful
devices and systems.

 What is software?

Software is comprises the aspects of a system not reduced to tangible

devices, e.g. computer programs and documentation. It is distinguished
from hardware, which consists of tangible devices, and often exists as
 collections of states of hardware devices. The boundary between
hardware and software can be blurry, as with firmware and microcode.

 What is Software Engineering?

Someday, Software Engneering may well be concerned with the

application of well-understood scientific methods to the construction,
operation, modification and maintenance of software. Today, however,
Sofware Engineering is concerned with finding ways in which to produce
working software for predictable costs in predictable time. When the
problems involved are very simple or when only one person is involved,
implementing software to meet their own needs, there isn't much to be
said, and we are a long way from having any scientific principles for the
production of software. Therefore, the major focus of software
engineering today is on well-tested heuristics for the production of
software to solve complex problems when many people are involved in
the process, as users, as analysts, as programmers, as managers, etc.
Therefore most of the issues in Software Engineering are concenred
with interactions among people, rather than with the production of
software.

 People
o People are not interchangeable
o People don't always do what they are told
o People are different
o People don't always work together very well
o It is tempting to classify people to make work go smoothly:
see: www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm
see: www.personalitypathways.com/MBTI_intro.html
see: www.9types.com/
 Systems
o A system is an assemblage of components that interact in some
manner among themselves and, possibly, with the world outside
the system boundary.
o We understand systems by decomposing them into
 subsystems
 system components
o We may decompose by focusing on the "nouns" (the subsystems
and system components), the "verbs" (the actions), the data flows,
the flows of control, ...
o Systems engineering and Operations Research predate Software
Engineering
o Software Engineering has had more impact upon Systems
Engineering than upon the creation of software
o It is very difficult to separate the software components of a system
from the other components of a system.
o Understanding a system
 Understand the interactions between the system and the
outside world
 Understand the internal actions of the system
o Define the institutional context
 Defining the business -- business models
 Commercial
 Blue collar industries -- manufacturing,
construction
 White collar industries -- banking, insurance,
media
 Service firms -- accounting, advertising,
consulting
 Academic
 Government
 Health care
 Charitable
 What are you producing?
 Goods -- hardware, software, commodities
 What do you want

money, applause

 What are you consuming?

 Writing a business plan
 Master plan for operation of the business
 Explains why this business is worth investing time and
money in
 Contents
 Purpose of this business
 Type of business, industry and or sector(s) of
operations
 Target market(s)
 Analysis of competition
 Response to competition
  Conceptual outline of business structure and
operation
 What goods or services the business will
provide
 Staffing and key personnel
 Marketing
 Sales
 Operations
 Financial plan
 See Wayne R. Parker's
http://www.action-links.com/businesspages/businessp
lan.htm
 Other institutional contexts require other approaches
 Basics of creating software
o Define the problem (needs analysis)
 Overall systems analysis (e.g. business analysis)
 Define the overall system or business (see above)
 By common terminology
 By industry, industry sector(s), function(s)
 Identify business environment and boundary
 Decompositions
 Top-down
 Object-oriented
 Apply both to the system and to the environment
 Identify the flows
 Control, information, goods
 Follow the money
 Identify software needs
 What does the system use to function AS-IS
 Follow the money or other rewards
 Look for commonly used software functions
 Accounting system
 Inventory control
 Payroll
 Taxes
 …
 What will the proposed new software contribute in terms of
new useful functions?
 Consideration of Alternatives
 Compare to software as used by competition
 Consider commercial and open source offerings
  Look for bottle-necks in information flows
 Manual systems amenable to automation
 Mismatched loads vs. service capacity
 Mismatched skills for systems in use
 Incremental change vs. big-bang
 Build vs. buy
 Multiply all build estimates by 3
 Have alternatives if build fails
 Have second sources for buys
 Evaluation of risks
 Minimize maximal losses
 One possible view of software life cycle
o Create a preliminary design
o Review the design
o Create a final design
o Implement
o Test
o Release
o Evaluate
o Maintain
o Revise
o May view these as discrete steps or deal with multiple steps in
parallel
o May have to recycle
 Understanding Systems
o Systems are made of components
o Unless a system is closed it has a system boundary
o Properties of a system are:
 Derived from properties of its components; or
 Derived from the interactions among its components; or
 Derived from the interactions of system components with
the world beyond the system boundary
o Some properties of a system (or its components) are observable
only from within the system
o Some of the properties of a system are observable from outside
the boundary of the system.
o Externally observable properties which arise from the operation of
the system as a whole are called emergent properties.
 Reliability, MTTF
 Availability, MTTF and MTTR
 Usability
  Marketability
 Security
o System Interactions with its environment
 Accept input
 Produce output
 Controls
 Consumption of resources
 Production of waste
 Unintended consequences (you cannot do just one thing).
o System Models
 Process Modeling
 Data Modeling
 Network Modeling
 Object Modeling
o Making decisions about systems

Software Design Strategies

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Software design is a process to conceptualize the software requirements into software

implementation. Software design takes the user requirements as challenges and tries to find
optimum solution. While the software is being conceptualized, a plan is chalked out to find the
best possible design for implementing the intended solution.

There are multiple variants of software design. Let us study them briefly:

Structured Design

Structured design is a conceptualization of problem into several well-organized elements of

solution. It is basically concerned with the solution design. Benefit of structured design is, it
gives better understanding of how the problem is being solved. Structured design also makes it
simpler for designer to concentrate on the problem more accurately.
Structured design is mostly based on ‘divide and conquer’ strategy where a problem is broken
into several small problems and each small problem is individually solved until the whole
problem is solved.

The small pieces of problem are solved by means of solution modules. Structured design
emphasis that these modules be well organized in order to achieve precise solution.

These modules are arranged in hierarchy. They communicate with each other. A good structured
design always follows some rules for communication among multiple modules, namely -

Cohesion - grouping of all functionally related elements.

Coupling - communication between different modules.

A good structured design has high cohesion and low coupling arrangements.

Function Oriented Design

In function-oriented design, the system is comprised of many smaller sub-systems known as

functions. These functions are capable of performing significant task in the system. The system
is considered as top view of all functions.

Function oriented design inherits some properties of structured design where divide and conquer
methodology is used.

This design mechanism divides the whole system into smaller functions, which provides means
of abstraction by concealing the information and their operation.. These functional modules can
share information among themselves by means of information passing and using information
available globally.

Another characteristic of functions is that when a program calls a function, the function changes
the state of the program, which sometimes is not acceptable by other modules. Function oriented
design works well where the system state does not matter and program/functions work on input
rather than on a state.

Design Process

 The whole system is seen as how data flows in the system by means of data flow diagram.
 DFD depicts how functions changes data and state of entire system.
 The entire system is logically broken down into smaller units known as functions on the basis of
their operation in the system.
 Each function is then described at large.
Object Oriented Design

Object oriented design works around the entities and their characteristics instead of functions
involved in the software system. This design strategies focuses on entities and its characteristics.
The whole concept of software solution revolves around the engaged entities.

Let us see the important concepts of Object Oriented Design:

 Objects - All entities involved in the solution design are known as objects. For example, person,
banks, company and customers are treated as objects. Every entity has some attributes
associated to it and has some methods to perform on the attributes.

 Classes - A class is a generalized description of an object. An object is an instance of a

class. Class defines all the attributes, which an object can have and methods, which
defines the functionality of the object.

In the solution design, attributes are stored as variables and functionalities are defined by
means of methods or procedures.

 Encapsulation - In OOD, the attributes (data variables) and methods (operation on the data) are
bundled together is called encapsulation. Encapsulation not only bundles important information
of an object together, but also restricts access of the data and methods from the outside world.
This is called information hiding.
 Inheritance - OOD allows similar classes to stack up in hierarchical manner where the lower or
sub-classes can import, implement and re-use allowed variables and methods from their
immediate super classes. This property of OOD is known as inheritance. This makes it easier to
define specific class and to create generalized classes from specific ones.
 Polymorphism - OOD languages provide a mechanism where methods performing similar tasks
but vary in arguments, can be assigned same name. This is called polymorphism, which allows a
single interface performing tasks for different types. Depending upon how the function is
invoked, respective portion of the code gets executed.

Design Process

Software design process can be perceived as series of well-defined steps. Though it varies
according to design approach (function oriented or object oriented, yet It may have the following
steps involved:

 A solution design is created from requirement or previous used system and/or system sequence
diagram.
 Objects are identified and grouped into classes on behalf of similarity in attribute characteristics.
 Class hierarchy and relation among them is defined.
 Application framework is defined.
Software Design Approaches

Here are two generic approaches for software designing:

Top Down Design

We know that a system is composed of more than one sub-systems and it contains a number of
components. Further, these sub-systems and components may have their on set of sub-system
and components and creates hierarchical structure in the system.

Top-down design takes the whole software system as one entity and then decomposes it to
achieve more than one sub-system or component based on some characteristics. Each sub-system
or component is then treated as a system and decomposed further. This process keeps on running
until the lowest level of system in the top-down hierarchy is achieved.

Top-down design starts with a generalized model of system and keeps on defining the more
specific part of it. When all components are composed the whole system comes into existence.

Top-down design is more suitable when the software solution needs to be designed from scratch
and specific details are unknown.

Bottom-up Design

The bottom up design model starts with most specific and basic components. It proceeds with
composing higher level of components by using basic or lower level components. It keeps
creating higher level components until the desired system is not evolved as one single
component. With each higher level, the amount of abstraction is increased.

Bottom-up strategy is more suitable when a system needs to be created from some existing
system, where the basic primitives can be used in the newer system.

Both, top-down and bottom-up approaches are not practical individually. Instead, a good
combination of both is used.

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Software Engineering Overview

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Let us first understand what software engineering stands for. The term is made of two words,
software and engineering.

Software is more than just a program code. A program is an executable code, which serves some
computational purpose. Software is considered to be collection of executable programming code,
associated libraries and documentations. Software, when made for a specific requirement is
called software product.

Engineering on the other hand, is all about developing products, using well-defined, scientific
principles and methods.
Software engineering is an engineering branch associated with development of software
product using well-defined scientific principles, methods and procedures. The outcome of
software engineering is an efficient and reliable software product.

Definitions

IEEE defines software engineering as:

(1) The application of a systematic,disciplined,quantifiable approach to the

development,operation and maintenance of software; that is, the application of engineering to
software.

(2) The study of approaches as in the above statement.

Fritz Bauer, a German computer scientist, defines software engineering as:

Software engineering is the establishment and use of sound engineering principles in order to
obtain economically software that is reliable and work efficiently on real machines.

Software Evolution

The process of developing a software product using software engineering principles and methods
is referred to as software evolution. This includes the initial development of software and its
maintenance and updates, till desired software product is developed, which satisfies the expected
requirements.

Evolution starts from the requirement gathering process. After which developers create a
prototype of the intended software and show it to the users to get their feedback at the early stage
of software product development. The users suggest changes, on which several consecutive
updates and maintenance keep on changing too. This process changes to the original software,
till the desired software is accomplished.

Even after the user has desired software in hand, the advancing technology and the changing
requirements force the software product to change accordingly. Re-creating software from
scratch and to go one-on-one with requirement is not feasible. The only feasible and economical
solution is to update the existing software so that it matches the latest requirements.

Software Evolution Laws

Lehman has given laws for software evolution. He divided the software into three different
categories:

 S-type (static-type) - This is a software, which works strictly according to defined specifications
and solutions. The solution and the method to achieve it, both are immediately understood
before coding. The s-type software is least subjected to changes hence this is the simplest of all.
For example, calculator program for mathematical computation.
 P-type (practical-type) - This is a software with a collection of procedures. This is defined by
exactly what procedures can do. In this software, the specifications can be described but the
solution is not obvious instantly. For example, gaming software.
 E-type (embedded-type) - This software works closely as the requirement of real-world
environment. This software has a high degree of evolution as there are various changes in laws,
taxes etc. in the real world situations. For example, Online trading software.
E-Type software evolution

Lehman has given eight laws for E-Type software evolution -

 Continuing change - An E-type software system must continue to adapt to the real world
changes, else it becomes progressively less useful.
 Increasing complexity - As an E-type software system evolves, its complexity tends to increase
unless work is done to maintain or reduce it.
 Conservation of familiarity - The familiarity with the software or the knowledge about how it
was developed, why was it developed in that particular manner etc. must be retained at any
cost, to implement the changes in the system.
 Continuing growth- In order for an E-type system intended to resolve some business problem,
its size of implementing the changes grows according to the lifestyle changes of the business.
 Reducing quality - An E-type software system declines in quality unless rigorously maintained
and adapted to a changing operational environment.
 Feedback systems- The E-type software systems constitute multi-loop, multi-level feedback
systems and must be treated as such to be successfully modified or improved.
 Self-regulation - E-type system evolution processes are self-regulating with the distribution of
product and process measures close to normal.
 Organizational stability - The average effective global activity rate in an evolving E-type system
is invariant over the lifetime of the product.

Software Paradigms

Software paradigms refer to the methods and steps, which are taken while designing the
software. There are many methods proposed and are in work today, but we need to see where in
the software engineering these paradigms stand. These can be combined into various categories,
though each of them is contained in one another:
Programming paradigm is a subset of Software design paradigm which is further a subset of
Software development paradigm.

Software Development Paradigm

This Paradigm is known as software engineering paradigms where all the engineering concepts
pertaining to the development of software are applied. It includes various researches and
requirement gathering which helps the software product to build. It consists of –

 Requirement gathering
 Software design
 Programming

Software Design Paradigm

This paradigm is a part of Software Development and includes –

 Design
 Maintenance
 Programming

Programming Paradigm

This paradigm is related closely to programming aspect of software development. This includes
–
  Coding
 Testing
 Integration

Need of Software Engineering

The need of software engineering arises because of higher rate of change in user requirements
and environment on which the software is working.

 Large software - It is easier to build a wall than to a house or building, likewise, as the size of
software become large engineering has to step to give it a scientific process.
 Scalability- If the software process were not based on scientific and engineering concepts, it
would be easier to re-create new software than to scale an existing one.
 Cost- As hardware industry has shown its skills and huge manufacturing has lower down he price
of computer and electronic hardware. But the cost of software remains high if proper process is
not adapted.
 Dynamic Nature- The always growing and adapting nature of software hugely depends upon the
environment in which user works. If the nature of software is always changing, new
enhancements need to be done in the existing one. This is where software engineering plays a
good role.
 Quality Management- Better process of software development provides better and quality
software product.

Characteristics of good software

A software product can be judged by what it offers and how well it can be used. This software
must satisfy on the following grounds:

 Operational
 Transitional
 Maintenance

Well-engineered and crafted software is expected to have the following characteristics:

Operational

This tells us how well software works in operations. It can be measured on:

 Budget
 Usability
 Efficiency
 Correctness
 Functionality
 Dependability
 Security
 Safety
Transitional

This aspect is important when the software is moved from one platform to another:

 Portability
 Interoperability
 Reusability
 Adaptability

Maintenance

This aspect briefs about how well a software has the capabilities to maintain itself in the ever-
changing environment:

 Modularity
 Maintainability
 Flexibility
 Scalability

In short, Software engineering is a branch of computer science, which uses well-defined

engineering concepts required to produce efficient, durable, scalable, in-budget and on-time
software products.

Software Development Life Cycle

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Software Development Life Cycle, SDLC for short, is a well-defined, structured sequence of
stages in software engineering to develop the intended software product.

SDLC Activities

SDLC provides a series of steps to be followed to design and develop a software product
efficiently. SDLC framework includes the following steps:
Communication

This is the first step where the user initiates the request for a desired software product. He
contacts the service provider and tries to negotiate the terms. He submits his request to the
service providing organization in writing.

Requirement Gathering

This step onwards the software development team works to carry on the project. The team holds
discussions with various stakeholders from problem domain and tries to bring out as much
information as possible on their requirements. The requirements are contemplated and segregated
into user requirements, system requirements and functional requirements. The requirements are
collected using a number of practices as given -

 studying the existing or obsolete system and software,

 conducting interviews of users and developers,
 referring to the database or
 collecting answers from the questionnaires.
Feasibility Study

After requirement gathering, the team comes up with a rough plan of software process. At this
step the team analyzes if a software can be made to fulfill all requirements of the user and if
there is any possibility of software being no more useful. It is found out, if the project is
financially, practically and technologically feasible for the organization to take up. There are
many algorithms available, which help the developers to conclude the feasibility of a software
project.

System Analysis

At this step the developers decide a roadmap of their plan and try to bring up the best software
model suitable for the project. System analysis includes Understanding of software product
limitations, learning system related problems or changes to be done in existing systems
beforehand, identifying and addressing the impact of project on organization and personnel etc.
The project team analyzes the scope of the project and plans the schedule and resources
accordingly.

Software Design

Next step is to bring down whole knowledge of requirements and analysis on the desk and design
the software product. The inputs from users and information gathered in requirement gathering
phase are the inputs of this step. The output of this step comes in the form of two designs; logical
design and physical design. Engineers produce meta-data and data dictionaries, logical diagrams,
data-flow diagrams and in some cases pseudo codes.

Coding

This step is also known as programming phase. The implementation of software design starts in
terms of writing program code in the suitable programming language and developing error-free
executable programs efficiently.

Testing

An estimate says that 50% of whole software development process should be tested. Errors may
ruin the software from critical level to its own removal. Software testing is done while coding by
the developers and thorough testing is conducted by testing experts at various levels of code such
as module testing, program testing, product testing, in-house testing and testing the product at
user’s end. Early discovery of errors and their remedy is the key to reliable software.

Integration

Software may need to be integrated with the libraries, databases and other program(s). This stage
of SDLC is involved in the integration of software with outer world entities.
Implementation

This means installing the software on user machines. At times, software needs post-installation
configurations at user end. Software is tested for portability and adaptability and integration
related issues are solved during implementation.

Operation and Maintenance

This phase confirms the software operation in terms of more efficiency and less errors. If
required, the users are trained on, or aided with the documentation on how to operate the
software and how to keep the software operational. The software is maintained timely by
updating the code according to the changes taking place in user end environment or technology.
This phase may face challenges from hidden bugs and real-world unidentified problems.

Disposition

As time elapses, the software may decline on the performance front. It may go completely
obsolete or may need intense upgradation. Hence a pressing need to eliminate a major portion of
the system arises. This phase includes archiving data and required software components, closing
down the system, planning disposition activity and terminating system at appropriate end-of-
system time.

Software Development Paradigm

The software development paradigm helps developer to select a strategy to develop the software.
A software development paradigm has its own set of tools, methods and procedures, which are
expressed clearly and defines software development life cycle. A few of software development
paradigms or process models are defined as follows:

Waterfall Model

Waterfall model is the simplest model of software development paradigm. It says the all the
phases of SDLC will function one after another in linear manner. That is, when the first phase is
finished then only the second phase will start and so on.
This model assumes that everything is carried out and taken place perfectly as planned in the
previous stage and there is no need to think about the past issues that may arise in the next phase.
This model does not work smoothly if there are some issues left at the previous step. The
sequential nature of model does not allow us go back and undo or redo our actions.

This model is best suited when developers already have designed and developed similar software
in the past and are aware of all its domains.

Iterative Model

This model leads the software development process in iterations. It projects the process of
development in cyclic manner repeating every step after every cycle of SDLC process.

The software is first developed on very small scale and all the steps are followed which are taken
into consideration. Then, on every next iteration, more features and modules are designed, coded,
tested and added to the software. Every cycle produces a software, which is complete in itself
and has more features and capabilities than that of the previous one.

After each iteration, the management team can do work on risk management and prepare for the
next iteration. Because a cycle includes small portion of whole software process, it is easier to
manage the development process but it consumes more resources.

Spiral Model

Spiral model is a combination of both, iterative model and one of the SDLC model. It can be
seen as if you choose one SDLC model and combine it with cyclic process (iterative model).

This model considers risk, which often goes un-noticed by most other models. The model starts
with determining objectives and constraints of the software at the start of one iteration. Next
phase is of prototyping the software. This includes risk analysis. Then one standard SDLC model
is used to build the software. In the fourth phase of the plan of next iteration is prepared.
V – model

The major drawback of waterfall model is we move to the next stage only when the previous one
is finished and there was no chance to go back if something is found wrong in later stages. V-
Model provides means of testing of software at each stage in reverse manner.

At every stage, test plans and test cases are created to verify and validate the product according
to the requirement of that stage. For example, in requirement gathering stage the test team
prepares all the test cases in correspondence to the requirements. Later, when the product is
developed and is ready for testing, test cases of this stage verify the software against its validity
towards requirements at this stage.

This makes both verification and validation go in parallel. This model is also known as
verification and validation model.

Big Bang Model

This model is the simplest model in its form. It requires little planning, lots of programming and
lots of funds. This model is conceptualized around the big bang of universe. As scientists say that
after big bang lots of galaxies, planets and stars evolved just as an event. Likewise, if we put
together lots of programming and funds, you may achieve the best software product.
For this model, very small amount of planning is required. It does not follow any process, or at
times the customer is not sure about the requirements and future needs. So the input requirements
are arbitrary.

This model is not suitable for large software projects but good one for learning and
experimenting.

For an in-depth reading on SDLC and its various models, click here.

Software Requirements

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The software requirements are description of features and functionalities of the target system.
Requirements convey the expectations of users from the software product. The requirements can
be obvious or hidden, known or unknown, expected or unexpected from client’s point of view.
Requirement Engineering

The process to gather the software requirements from client, analyze and document them is
known as requirement engineering.

The goal of requirement engineering is to develop and maintain sophisticated and descriptive
‘System Requirements Specification’ document.

Requirement Engineering Process

It is a four step process, which includes –

 Feasibility Study
 Requirement Gathering
 Software Requirement Specification
 Software Requirement Validation

Let us see the process briefly -

Feasibility study

When the client approaches the organization for getting the desired product developed, it comes
up with rough idea about what all functions the software must perform and which all features are
expected from the software.

Referencing to this information, the analysts does a detailed study about whether the desired
system and its functionality are feasible to develop.

This feasibility study is focused towards goal of the organization. This study analyzes whether
the software product can be practically materialized in terms of implementation, contribution of
project to organization, cost constraints and as per values and objectives of the organization. It
explores technical aspects of the project and product such as usability, maintainability,
productivity and integration ability.

The output of this phase should be a feasibility study report that should contain adequate
comments and recommendations for management about whether or not the project should be
undertaken.

Requirement Gathering

If the feasibility report is positive towards undertaking the project, next phase starts with
gathering requirements from the user. Analysts and engineers communicate with the client and
end-users to know their ideas on what the software should provide and which features they want
the software to include.
Software Requirement Specification

SRS is a document created by system analyst after the requirements are collected from various
stakeholders.

SRS defines how the intended software will interact with hardware, external interfaces, speed of
operation, response time of system, portability of software across various platforms,
maintainability, speed of recovery after crashing, Security, Quality, Limitations etc.

The requirements received from client are written in natural language. It is the responsibility of
system analyst to document the requirements in technical language so that they can be
comprehended and useful by the software development team.

SRS should come up with following features:

 User Requirements are expressed in natural language.

 Technical requirements are expressed in structured language, which is used inside the
organization.
 Design description should be written in Pseudo code.
 Format of Forms and GUI screen prints.
 Conditional and mathematical notations for DFDs etc.

Software Requirement Validation

After requirement specifications are developed, the requirements mentioned in this document are
validated. User might ask for illegal, impractical solution or experts may interpret the
requirements incorrectly. This results in huge increase in cost if not nipped in the bud.
Requirements can be checked against following conditions -

 If they can be practically implemented

 If they are valid and as per functionality and domain of software
 If there are any ambiguities
 If they are complete
 If they can be demonstrated

Requirement Elicitation Process

Requirement elicitation process can be depicted using the folloiwng diagram:

 Requirements gathering - The developers discuss with the client and end users and know their
expectations from the software.
  Organizing Requirements - The developers prioritize and arrange the requirements in order of
importance, urgency and convenience.

 Negotiation & discussion - If requirements are ambiguous or there are some conflicts in
requirements of various stakeholders, if they are, it is then negotiated and discussed with
stakeholders. Requirements may then be prioritized and reasonably compromised.

The requirements come from various stakeholders. To remove the ambiguity and
conflicts, they are discussed for clarity and correctness. Unrealistic requirements are
compromised reasonably.

 Documentation - All formal & informal, functional and non-functional requirements are
documented and made available for next phase processing.

Requirement Elicitation Techniques

Requirements Elicitation is the process to find out the requirements for an intended software
system by communicating with client, end users, system users and others who have a stake in the
software system development.

There are various ways to discover requirements

Interviews

Interviews are strong medium to collect requirements. Organization may conduct several types
of interviews such as:

 Structured (closed) interviews, where every single information to gather is decided in advance,
they follow pattern and matter of discussion firmly.
 Non-structured (open) interviews, where information to gather is not decided in advance, more
flexible and less biased.
 Oral interviews
 Written interviews
 One-to-one interviews which are held between two persons across the table.
 Group interviews which are held between groups of participants. They help to uncover any
missing requirement as numerous people are involved.

Surveys

Organization may conduct surveys among various stakeholders by querying about their
expectation and requirements from the upcoming system.

Questionnaires

A document with pre-defined set of objective questions and respective options is handed over to
all stakeholders to answer, which are collected and compiled.
A shortcoming of this technique is, if an option for some issue is not mentioned in the
questionnaire, the issue might be left unattended.

Task analysis

Team of engineers and developers may analyze the operation for which the new system is
required. If the client already has some software to perform certain operation, it is studied and
requirements of proposed system are collected.

Domain Analysis

Every software falls into some domain category. The expert people in the domain can be a great
help to analyze general and specific requirements.

Brainstorming

An informal debate is held among various stakeholders and all their inputs are recorded for
further requirements analysis.

Prototyping

Prototyping is building user interface without adding detail functionality for user to interpret the
features of intended software product. It helps giving better idea of requirements. If there is no
software installed at client’s end for developer’s reference and the client is not aware of its own
requirements, the developer creates a prototype based on initially mentioned requirements. The
prototype is shown to the client and the feedback is noted. The client feedback serves as an input
for requirement gathering.

Observation

Team of experts visit the client’s organization or workplace. They observe the actual working of
the existing installed systems. They observe the workflow at client’s end and how execution
problems are dealt. The team itself draws some conclusions which aid to form requirements
expected from the software.

Software Requirements Characteristics

Gathering software requirements is the foundation of the entire software development project.
Hence they must be clear, correct and well-defined.

A complete Software Requirement Specifications must be:

 Clear
 Correct
 Consistent
 Coherent
  Comprehensible
 Modifiable
 Verifiable
 Prioritized
 Unambiguous
 Traceable
 Credible source

Software Requirements

We should try to understand what sort of requirements may arise in the requirement elicitation
phase and what kinds of requirements are expected from the software system.

Broadly software requirements should be categorized in two categories:

Functional Requirements

Requirements, which are related to functional aspect of software fall into this category.

They define functions and functionality within and from the software system.

Examples -

 Search option given to user to search from various invoices.

 User should be able to mail any report to management.
 Users can be divided into groups and groups can be given separate rights.
 Should comply business rules and administrative functions.
 Software is developed keeping downward compatibility intact.

Non-Functional Requirements

Requirements, which are not related to functional aspect of software, fall into this category. They
are implicit or expected characteristics of software, which users make assumption of.

Non-functional requirements include -

 Security
 Logging
 Storage
 Configuration
 Performance
 Cost
 Interoperability
 Flexibility
 Disaster recovery
 Accessibility
Requirements are categorized logically as

 Must Have : Software cannot be said operational without them.

 Should have : Enhancing the functionality of software.
 Could have : Software can still properly function with these requirements.
 Wish list : These requirements do not map to any objectives of software.

While developing software, ‘Must have’ must be implemented, ‘Should have’ is a matter of
debate with stakeholders and negation, whereas ‘could have’ and ‘wish list’ can be kept for
software updates.

User Interface requirements

UI is an important part of any software or hardware or hybrid system. A software is widely

accepted if it is -

 easy to operate
 quick in response
 effectively handling operational errors
 providing simple yet consistent user interface

User acceptance majorly depends upon how user can use the software. UI is the only way for
users to perceive the system. A well performing software system must also be equipped with
attractive, clear, consistent and responsive user interface. Otherwise the functionalities of
software system can not be used in convenient way. A system is said be good if it provides
means to use it efficiently. User interface requirements are briefly mentioned below -

 Content presentation
 Easy Navigation
 Simple interface
 Responsive
 Consistent UI elements
 Feedback mechanism
 Default settings
 Purposeful layout
 Strategical use of color and texture.
 Provide help information
 User centric approach
 Group based view settings.

Software System Analyst

System analyst in an IT organization is a person, who analyzes the requirement of proposed

system and ensures that requirements are conceived and documented properly & correctly. Role
of an analyst starts during Software Analysis Phase of SDLC. It is the responsibility of analyst to
make sure that the developed software meets the requirements of the client.
System Analysts have the following responsibilities:

 Analyzing and understanding requirements of intended software

 Understanding how the project will contribute in the organization objectives
 Identify sources of requirement
 Validation of requirement
 Develop and implement requirement management plan
 Documentation of business, technical, process and product requirements
 Coordination with clients to prioritize requirements and remove and ambiguity
 Finalizing acceptance criteria with client and other stakeholders

Software Metrics and Measures

Software Measures can be understood as a process of quantifying and symbolizing various

attributes and aspects of software.

Software Metrics provide measures for various aspects of software process and software product.

Software measures are fundamental requirement of software engineering. They not only help to
control the software development process but also aid to keep quality of ultimate product
excellent.

According to Tom DeMarco, a (Software Engineer), “You cannot control what you cannot
measure.” By his saying, it is very clear how important software measures are.

Let us see some software metrics:

 Size Metrics - LOC (Lines of Code), mostly calculated in thousands of delivered source
code lines, denoted as KLOC.

Function Point Count is measure of the functionality provided by the software. Function
Point count defines the size of functional aspect of software.

 Complexity Metrics - McCabe’s Cyclomatic complexity quantifies the upper bound of the
number of independent paths in a program, which is perceived as complexity of the program or
its modules. It is represented in terms of graph theory concepts by using control flow graph.

 Quality Metrics - Defects, their types and causes, consequence, intensity of severity and
their implications define the quality of product.

The number of defects found in development process and number of defects reported by
the client after the product is installed or delivered at client-end, define quality of
product.

 Process Metrics - In various phases of SDLC, the methods and tools used, the company
standards and the performance of development are software process metrics.
  Resource Metrics - Effort, time and various resources used, represents metrics for resource
measurement.

Software Design Basics

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Software design is a process to transform user requirements into some suitable form, which helps
the programmer in software coding and implementation.

For assessing user requirements, an SRS (Software Requirement Specification) document is

created whereas for coding and implementation, there is a need of more specific and detailed
requirements in software terms. The output of this process can directly be used into
implementation in programming languages.

Software design is the first step in SDLC (Software Design Life Cycle), which moves the
concentration from problem domain to solution domain. It tries to specify how to fulfill the
requirements mentioned in SRS.

Software Design Levels

Software design yields three levels of results:

 Architectural Design - The architectural design is the highest abstract version of the system. It
identifies the software as a system with many components interacting with each other. At this
level, the designers get the idea of proposed solution domain.
 High-level Design- The high-level design breaks the ‘single entity-multiple component’ concept
of architectural design into less-abstracted view of sub-systems and modules and depicts their
interaction with each other. High-level design focuses on how the system along with all of its
components can be implemented in forms of modules. It recognizes modular structure of each
sub-system and their relation and interaction among each other.
 Detailed Design- Detailed design deals with the implementation part of what is seen as a system
and its sub-systems in the previous two designs. It is more detailed towards modules and their
implementations. It defines logical structure of each module and their interfaces to
communicate with other modules.
Modularization

Modularization is a technique to divide a software system into multiple discrete and independent
modules, which are expected to be capable of carrying out task(s) independently. These modules
may work as basic constructs for the entire software. Designers tend to design modules such that
they can be executed and/or compiled separately and independently.

Modular design unintentionally follows the rules of ‘divide and conquer’ problem-solving
strategy this is because there are many other benefits attached with the modular design of a
software.

Advantage of modularization:

 Smaller components are easier to maintain

 Program can be divided based on functional aspects
 Desired level of abstraction can be brought in the program
 Components with high cohesion can be re-used again
 Concurrent execution can be made possible
 Desired from security aspect

Concurrency

Back in time, all software are meant to be executed sequentially. By sequential execution we
mean that the coded instruction will be executed one after another implying only one portion of
program being activated at any given time. Say, a software has multiple modules, then only one
of all the modules can be found active at any time of execution.

In software design, concurrency is implemented by splitting the software into multiple

independent units of execution, like modules and executing them in parallel. In other words,
concurrency provides capability to the software to execute more than one part of code in parallel
to each other.

It is necessary for the programmers and designers to recognize those modules, which can be
made parallel execution.

Example

The spell check feature in word processor is a module of software, which runs along side the
word processor itself.

Coupling and Cohesion

When a software program is modularized, its tasks are divided into several modules based on
some characteristics. As we know, modules are set of instructions put together in order to
achieve some tasks. They are though, considered as single entity but may refer to each other to
work together. There are measures by which the quality of a design of modules and their
interaction among them can be measured. These measures are called coupling and cohesion.

Cohesion

Cohesion is a measure that defines the degree of intra-dependability within elements of a

module. The greater the cohesion, the better is the program design.

There are seven types of cohesion, namely –

 Co-incidental cohesion - It is unplanned and random cohesion, which might be the result of
breaking the program into smaller modules for the sake of modularization. Because it is
unplanned, it may serve confusion to the programmers and is generally not-accepted.
 Logical cohesion - When logically categorized elements are put together into a module, it is
called logical cohesion.
 Temporal Cohesion - When elements of module are organized such that they are processed at a
similar point in time, it is called temporal cohesion.
 Procedural cohesion - When elements of module are grouped together, which are executed
sequentially in order to perform a task, it is called procedural cohesion.
 Communicational cohesion - When elements of module are grouped together, which are
executed sequentially and work on same data (information), it is called communicational
cohesion.
 Sequential cohesion - When elements of module are grouped because the output of one
element serves as input to another and so on, it is called sequential cohesion.
 Functional cohesion - It is considered to be the highest degree of cohesion, and it is highly
expected. Elements of module in functional cohesion are grouped because they all contribute to
a single well-defined function. It can also be reused.

Coupling

Coupling is a measure that defines the level of inter-dependability among modules of a program.
It tells at what level the modules interfere and interact with each other. The lower the coupling,
the better the program.

There are five levels of coupling, namely -

 Content coupling - When a module can directly access or modify or refer to the content of
another module, it is called content level coupling.
 Common coupling- When multiple modules have read and write access to some global data, it is
called common or global coupling.
 Control coupling- Two modules are called control-coupled if one of them decides the function of
the other module or changes its flow of execution.
 Stamp coupling- When multiple modules share common data structure and work on different
part of it, it is called stamp coupling.
 Data coupling- Data coupling is when two modules interact with each other by means of passing
data (as parameter). If a module passes data structure as parameter, then the receiving module
should use all its components.
Ideally, no coupling is considered to be the best.

Design Verification

The output of software design process is design documentation, pseudo codes, detailed logic
diagrams, process diagrams, and detailed description of all functional or non-functional
requirements.

The next phase, which is the implementation of software, depends on all outputs mentioned
above.

It is then becomes necessary to verify the output before proceeding to the next phase. The early
any mistake is detected, the better it is or it might not be detected until testing of the product. If
the outputs of design phase are in formal notation form, then their associated tools for
verification should be used otherwise a thorough design review can be used for verification and
validation.

By structured verification approach, reviewers can detect defects that might be caused by
overlooking some conditions. A good design review is important for good software design,
accuracy and quality.

Software Analysis & Design Tools

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Software analysis and design includes all activities, which help the transformation of
requirement specification into implementation. Requirement specifications specify all functional
and non-functional expectations from the software. These requirement specifications come in the
shape of human readable and understandable documents, to which a computer has nothing to do.

Software analysis and design is the intermediate stage, which helps human-readable
requirements to be transformed into actual code.

Let us see few analysis and design tools used by software designers:
Data Flow Diagram

Data flow diagram is graphical representation of flow of data in an information system. It is

capable of depicting incoming data flow, outgoing data flow and stored data. The DFD does not
mention anything about how data flows through the system.

There is a prominent difference between DFD and Flowchart. The flowchart depicts flow of
control in program modules. DFDs depict flow of data in the system at various levels. DFD does
not contain any control or branch elements.

Types of DFD

Data Flow Diagrams are either Logical or Physical.

 Logical DFD - This type of DFD concentrates on the system process, and flow of data in the
system.For example in a Banking software system, how data is moved between different
entities.
 Physical DFD - This type of DFD shows how the data flow is actually implemented in the system.
It is more specific and close to the implementation.

DFD Components

DFD can represent Source, destination, storage and flow of data using the following set of
components -

 Entities - Entities are source and destination of information data. Entities are represented by a
rectangles with their respective names.
 Process - Activities and action taken on the data are represented by Circle or Round-edged
rectangles.
 Data Storage - There are two variants of data storage - it can either be represented as a
rectangle with absence of both smaller sides or as an open-sided rectangle with only one side
missing.
 Data Flow - Movement of data is shown by pointed arrows. Data movement is shown from the
base of arrow as its source towards head of the arrow as destination.

Levels of DFD

 Level 0 - Highest abstraction level DFD is known as Level 0 DFD, which depicts the entire
information system as one diagram concealing all the underlying details. Level 0 DFDs are also
known as context level DFDs.
 Level 1 - The Level 0 DFD is broken down into more specific, Level 1 DFD. Level 1 DFD depicts
basic modules in the system and flow of data among various modules. Level 1 DFD also
mentions basic processes and sources of information.

 Level 2 - At this level, DFD shows how data flows inside the modules mentioned in
Level 1.
 Higher level DFDs can be transformed into more specific lower level DFDs with deeper
level of understanding unless the desired level of specification is achieved.

Structure Charts

Structure chart is a chart derived from Data Flow Diagram. It represents the system in more
detail than DFD. It breaks down the entire system into lowest functional modules, describes
functions and sub-functions of each module of the system to a greater detail than DFD.

Structure chart represents hierarchical structure of modules. At each layer a specific task is
performed.

Here are the symbols used in construction of structure charts -

 Module - It represents process or subroutine or task. A control module branches to more than
one sub-module. Library Modules are re-usable and invokable from any module.

 Condition - It is represented by small diamond at the base of module. It depicts that control
module can select any of sub-routine based on some condition.
 Jump - An arrow is shown pointing inside the module to depict that the control will jump in the

middle of the sub-module.

 Loop - A curved arrow represents loop in the module. All sub-modules covered by loop repeat

execution of module.
 Data flow - A directed arrow with empty circle at the end represents data flow.

 Control flow - A directed arrow with filled circle at the end represents control flow.
HIPO Diagram

HIPO (Hierarchical Input Process Output) diagram is a combination of two organized method to
analyze the system and provide the means of documentation. HIPO model was developed by
IBM in year 1970.

HIPO diagram represents the hierarchy of modules in the software system. Analyst uses HIPO
diagram in order to obtain high-level view of system functions. It decomposes functions into
sub-functions in a hierarchical manner. It depicts the functions performed by system.

HIPO diagrams are good for documentation purpose. Their graphical representation makes it
easier for designers and managers to get the pictorial idea of the system structure.

In contrast to IPO (Input Process Output) diagram, which depicts the flow of control and data in
a module, HIPO does not provide any information about data flow or control flow.
Example

Both parts of HIPO diagram, Hierarchical presentation and IPO Chart are used for structure
design of software program as well as documentation of the same.

Structured English

Most programmers are unaware of the large picture of software so they only rely on what their
managers tell them to do. It is the responsibility of higher software management to provide
accurate information to the programmers to develop accurate yet fast code.

Other forms of methods, which use graphs or diagrams, may are sometimes interpreted
differently by different people.

Hence, analysts and designers of the software come up with tools such as Structured English. It
is nothing but the description of what is required to code and how to code it. Structured English
helps the programmer to write error-free code.

Other form of methods, which use graphs or diagrams, may are sometimes interpreted differently
by different people. Here, both Structured English and Pseudo-Code tries to mitigate that
understanding gap.

Structured English is the It uses plain English words in structured programming paradigm. It is
not the ultimate code but a kind of description what is required to code and how to code it. The
following are some tokens of structured programming.

IF-THEN-ELSE,
DO-WHILE-UNTIL

Analyst uses the same variable and data name, which are stored in Data Dictionary, making it
much simpler to write and understand the code.

Example

We take the same example of Customer Authentication in the online shopping environment. This
procedure to authenticate customer can be written in Structured English as:

Enter Customer_Name
SEEK Customer_Name in Customer_Name_DB file
IF Customer_Name found THEN
Call procedure USER_PASSWORD_AUTHENTICATE()
ELSE
PRINT error message
Call procedure NEW_CUSTOMER_REQUEST()
ENDIF
The code written in Structured English is more like day-to-day spoken English. It can not be
implemented directly as a code of software. Structured English is independent of programming
language.

Pseudo-Code

Pseudo code is written more close to programming language. It may be considered as augmented
programming language, full of comments and descriptions.

Pseudo code avoids variable declaration but they are written using some actual programming
language’s constructs, like C, Fortran, Pascal etc.

Pseudo code contains more programming details than Structured English. It provides a method to
perform the task, as if a computer is executing the code.

Example

Program to print Fibonacci up to n numbers.

void function Fibonacci

Get value of n;
Set value of a to 1;
Set value of b to 1;
Initialize I to 0
for (i=0; i< n; i++)
{
if a greater than b
{
Increase b by a;
Print b;
}
else if b greater than a
{
increase a by b;
print a;
}
}

Decision Tables

A Decision table represents conditions and the respective actions to be taken to address them, in
a structured tabular format.

It is a powerful tool to debug and prevent errors. It helps group similar information into a single
table and then by combining tables it delivers easy and convenient decision-making.

Creating Decision Table

To create the decision table, the developer must follow basic four steps:
  Identify all possible conditions to be addressed
 Determine actions for all identified conditions
 Create Maximum possible rules
 Define action for each rule

Decision Tables should be verified by end-users and can lately be simplified by eliminating
duplicate rules and actions.

Example

Let us take a simple example of day-to-day problem with our Internet connectivity. We begin by
identifying all problems that can arise while starting the internet and their respective possible
solutions.

We list all possible problems under column conditions and the prospective actions under column
Actions.

Conditions/Actions Rules

Shows Connected NNNNY Y YY

Conditions Ping is Working NNY Y NNYY

Opens Website Y NY NY NYN

Check network cable X

Check internet router X X XX

Actions Restart Web Browser X

Contact Service provider X XX X XX

Do no action

Table : Decision Table – In-house Internet Troubleshooting

Entity-Relationship Model

Entity-Relationship model is a type of database model based on the notion of real world entities
and relationship among them. We can map real world scenario onto ER database model. ER
Model creates a set of entities with their attributes, a set of constraints and relation among them.

ER Model is best used for the conceptual design of database. ER Model can be represented as
follows :
  Entity - An entity in ER Model is a real world being, which has some properties called
attributes. Every attribute is defined by its corresponding set of values, called domain.

For example, Consider a school database. Here, a student is an entity. Student has various
attributes like name, id, age and class etc.

 Relationship - The logical association among entities is called relationship.

Relationships are mapped with entities in various ways. Mapping cardinalities define the
number of associations between two entities.

Mapping cardinalities:

o one to one
o one to many
o many to one
o many to many

Data Dictionary

Data dictionary is the centralized collection of information about data. It stores meaning and
origin of data, its relationship with other data, data format for usage etc. Data dictionary has
rigorous definitions of all names in order to facilitate user and software designers.

Data dictionary is often referenced as meta-data (data about data) repository. It is created along
with DFD (Data Flow Diagram) model of software program and is expected to be updated
whenever DFD is changed or updated.

Requirement of Data Dictionary

The data is referenced via data dictionary while designing and implementing software. Data
dictionary removes any chances of ambiguity. It helps keeping work of programmers and
designers synchronized while using same object reference everywhere in the program.

Data dictionary provides a way of documentation for the complete database system in one place.
Validation of DFD is carried out using data dictionary.
Contents

Data dictionary should contain information about the following

 Data Flow
 Data Structure
 Data Elements
 Data Stores
 Data Processing

Data Flow is described by means of DFDs as studied earlier and represented in algebraic form as
described.

= Composed of

{} Repetition

() Optional

+ And

[ / ] Or

Example

Address = House No + (Street / Area) + City + State

Course ID = Course Number + Course Name + Course Level + Course Grades

Data Elements

Data elements consist of Name and descriptions of Data and Control Items, Internal or External
data stores etc. with the following details:

 Primary Name
 Secondary Name (Alias)
 Use-case (How and where to use)
 Content Description (Notation etc. )
 Supplementary Information (preset values, constraints etc.)

Data Store

It stores the information from where the data enters into the system and exists out of the system.
The Data Store may include -

 Files
 o Internal to software.
o External to software but on the same machine.
o External to software and system, located on different machine.
 Tables
o Naming convention
o Indexing property

Data Processing

There are two types of Data Processing:

 Logical: As user sees it

 Physical: As software sees it

Software Design Strategies

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Software design is a process to conceptualize the software requirements into software

implementation. Software design takes the user requirements as challenges and tries to find
optimum solution. While the software is being conceptualized, a plan is chalked out to find the
best possible design for implementing the intended solution.

There are multiple variants of software design. Let us study them briefly:

Structured Design

Structured design is a conceptualization of problem into several well-organized elements of

solution. It is basically concerned with the solution design. Benefit of structured design is, it
gives better understanding of how the problem is being solved. Structured design also makes it
simpler for designer to concentrate on the problem more accurately.

Structured design is mostly based on ‘divide and conquer’ strategy where a problem is broken
into several small problems and each small problem is individually solved until the whole
problem is solved.
The small pieces of problem are solved by means of solution modules. Structured design
emphasis that these modules be well organized in order to achieve precise solution.

These modules are arranged in hierarchy. They communicate with each other. A good structured
design always follows some rules for communication among multiple modules, namely -

Cohesion - grouping of all functionally related elements.

Coupling - communication between different modules.

A good structured design has high cohesion and low coupling arrangements.

Function Oriented Design

In function-oriented design, the system is comprised of many smaller sub-systems known as

functions. These functions are capable of performing significant task in the system. The system
is considered as top view of all functions.

Function oriented design inherits some properties of structured design where divide and conquer
methodology is used.

This design mechanism divides the whole system into smaller functions, which provides means
of abstraction by concealing the information and their operation.. These functional modules can
share information among themselves by means of information passing and using information
available globally.

Another characteristic of functions is that when a program calls a function, the function changes
the state of the program, which sometimes is not acceptable by other modules. Function oriented
design works well where the system state does not matter and program/functions work on input
rather than on a state.

Design Process

 The whole system is seen as how data flows in the system by means of data flow diagram.
 DFD depicts how functions changes data and state of entire system.
 The entire system is logically broken down into smaller units known as functions on the basis of
their operation in the system.
 Each function is then described at large.

Object Oriented Design

Object oriented design works around the entities and their characteristics instead of functions
involved in the software system. This design strategies focuses on entities and its characteristics.
The whole concept of software solution revolves around the engaged entities.

Let us see the important concepts of Object Oriented Design:

  Objects - All entities involved in the solution design are known as objects. For example, person,
banks, company and customers are treated as objects. Every entity has some attributes
associated to it and has some methods to perform on the attributes.

 Classes - A class is a generalized description of an object. An object is an instance of a

class. Class defines all the attributes, which an object can have and methods, which
defines the functionality of the object.

In the solution design, attributes are stored as variables and functionalities are defined by
means of methods or procedures.

 Encapsulation - In OOD, the attributes (data variables) and methods (operation on the data) are
bundled together is called encapsulation. Encapsulation not only bundles important information
of an object together, but also restricts access of the data and methods from the outside world.
This is called information hiding.
 Inheritance - OOD allows similar classes to stack up in hierarchical manner where the lower or
sub-classes can import, implement and re-use allowed variables and methods from their
immediate super classes. This property of OOD is known as inheritance. This makes it easier to
define specific class and to create generalized classes from specific ones.
 Polymorphism - OOD languages provide a mechanism where methods performing similar tasks
but vary in arguments, can be assigned same name. This is called polymorphism, which allows a
single interface performing tasks for different types. Depending upon how the function is
invoked, respective portion of the code gets executed.

Design Process

Software design process can be perceived as series of well-defined steps. Though it varies
according to design approach (function oriented or object oriented, yet It may have the following
steps involved:

 A solution design is created from requirement or previous used system and/or system sequence
diagram.
 Objects are identified and grouped into classes on behalf of similarity in attribute characteristics.
 Class hierarchy and relation among them is defined.
 Application framework is defined.

Software Design Approaches

Here are two generic approaches for software designing:

Top Down Design

We know that a system is composed of more than one sub-systems and it contains a number of
components. Further, these sub-systems and components may have their on set of sub-system
and components and creates hierarchical structure in the system.
Top-down design takes the whole software system as one entity and then decomposes it to
achieve more than one sub-system or component based on some characteristics. Each sub-system
or component is then treated as a system and decomposed further. This process keeps on running
until the lowest level of system in the top-down hierarchy is achieved.

Top-down design starts with a generalized model of system and keeps on defining the more
specific part of it. When all components are composed the whole system comes into existence.

Top-down design is more suitable when the software solution needs to be designed from scratch
and specific details are unknown.

Bottom-up Design

The bottom up design model starts with most specific and basic components. It proceeds with
composing higher level of components by using basic or lower level components. It keeps
creating higher level components until the desired system is not evolved as one single
component. With each higher level, the amount of abstraction is increased.

Bottom-up strategy is more suitable when a system needs to be created from some existing
system, where the basic primitives can be used in the newer system.

Both, top-down and bottom-up approaches are not practical individually. Instead, a good
combination of both is used.

Software User Interface Design

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User interface is the front-end application view to which user interacts in order to use the
software. User can manipulate and control the software as well as hardware by means of user
interface. Today, user interface is found at almost every place where digital technology exists,
right from computers, mobile phones, cars, music players, airplanes, ships etc.

User interface is part of software and is designed such a way that it is expected to provide the
user insight of the software. UI provides fundamental platform for human-computer interaction.
UI can be graphical, text-based, audio-video based, depending upon the underlying hardware and
software combination. UI can be hardware or software or a combination of both.

The software becomes more popular if its user interface is:

 Attractive
 Simple to use
 Responsive in short time
 Clear to understand
 Consistent on all interfacing screens

UI is broadly divided into two categories:

 Command Line Interface

 Graphical User Interface

Command Line Interface (CLI)

CLI has been a great tool of interaction with computers until the video display monitors came
into existence. CLI is first choice of many technical users and programmers. CLI is minimum
interface a software can provide to its users.

CLI provides a command prompt, the place where the user types the command and feeds to the
system. The user needs to remember the syntax of command and its use. Earlier CLI were not
programmed to handle the user errors effectively.

A command is a text-based reference to set of instructions, which are expected to be executed by

the system. There are methods like macros, scripts that make it easy for the user to operate.

CLI uses less amount of computer resource as compared to GUI.

CLI Elements

A text-based command line interface can have the following elements:

 Command Prompt - It is text-based notifier that is mostly shows the context in which
the user is working. It is generated by the software system.
 Cursor - It is a small horizontal line or a vertical bar of the height of line, to represent
position of character while typing. Cursor is mostly found in blinking state. It moves as
the user writes or deletes something.
 Command - A command is an executable instruction. It may have one or more
parameters. Output on command execution is shown inline on the screen. When output is
produced, command prompt is displayed on the next line.

Graphical User Interface

Graphical User Interface provides the user graphical means to interact with the system. GUI can
be combination of both hardware and software. Using GUI, user interprets the software.

Typically, GUI is more resource consuming than that of CLI. With advancing technology, the
programmers and designers create complex GUI designs that work with more efficiency,
accuracy and speed.

GUI Elements

GUI provides a set of components to interact with software or hardware.

Every graphical component provides a way to work with the system. A GUI system has
following elements such as:

 Window - An area where contents of application are displayed. Contents in a window

can be displayed in the form of icons or lists, if the window represents file structure. It is
easier for a user to navigate in the file system in an exploring window. Windows can be
minimized, resized or maximized to the size of screen. They can be moved anywhere on
the screen. A window may contain another window of the same application, called child
window.
 Tabs - If an application allows executing multiple instances of itself, they appear on the
screen as separate windows. Tabbed Document Interface has come up to open multiple
documents in the same window. This interface also helps in viewing preference panel in
application. All modern web-browsers use this feature.
 Menu - Menu is an array of standard commands, grouped together and placed at a visible
place (usually top) inside the application window. The menu can be programmed to
appear or hide on mouse clicks.
 Icon - An icon is small picture representing an associated application. When these icons
are clicked or double clicked, the application window is opened. Icon displays application
and programs installed on a system in the form of small pictures.
 Cursor - Interacting devices such as mouse, touch pad, digital pen are represented in
GUI as cursors. On screen cursor follows the instructions from hardware in almost real-
time. Cursors are also named pointers in GUI systems. They are used to select menus,
windows and other application features.

Application specific GUI components

A GUI of an application contains one or more of the listed GUI elements:

 Application Window - Most application windows uses the constructs supplied by
operating systems but many use their own customer created windows to contain the
contents of application.
 Dialogue Box - It is a child window that contains message for the user and request for
some action to be taken. For Example: Application generate a dialogue to get
confirmation from user to delete a file.

 Text-Box - Provides an area for user to type and enter text-based data.
 Buttons - They imitate real life buttons and are used to submit inputs to the software.

 Radio-button - Displays available options for selection. Only one can be selected among
all offered.
 Check-box - Functions similar to list-box. When an option is selected, the box is marked
as checked. Multiple options represented by check boxes can be selected.
 List-box - Provides list of available items for selection. More than one item can be
selected.
Other impressive GUI components are:

 Sliders
 Combo-box
 Data-grid
 Drop-down list

User Interface Design Activities

There are a number of activities performed for designing user interface. The process of GUI
design and implementation is alike SDLC. Any model can be used for GUI implementation
among Waterfall, Iterative or Spiral Model.

A model used for GUI design and development should fulfill these GUI specific steps.
  GUI Requirement Gathering - The designers may like to have list of all functional and
non-functional requirements of GUI. This can be taken from user and their existing
software solution.
 User Analysis - The designer studies who is going to use the software GUI. The target
audience matters as the design details change according to the knowledge and
competency level of the user. If user is technical savvy, advanced and complex GUI can
be incorporated. For a novice user, more information is included on how-to of software.
 Task Analysis - Designers have to analyze what task is to be done by the software
solution. Here in GUI, it does not matter how it will be done. Tasks can be represented in
hierarchical manner taking one major task and dividing it further into smaller sub-tasks.
Tasks provide goals for GUI presentation. Flow of information among sub-tasks
determines the flow of GUI contents in the software.
 GUI Design & implementation - Designers after having information about
requirements, tasks and user environment, design the GUI and implements into code and
embed the GUI with working or dummy software in the background. It is then self-tested
by the developers.
 Testing - GUI testing can be done in various ways. Organization can have in-house
inspection, direct involvement of users and release of beta version are few of them.
Testing may include usability, compatibility, user acceptance etc.

GUI Implementation Tools

There are several tools available using which the designers can create entire GUI on a mouse
click. Some tools can be embedded into the software environment (IDE).

GUI implementation tools provide powerful array of GUI controls. For software customization,
designers can change the code accordingly.

There are different segments of GUI tools according to their different use and platform.

Example

Mobile GUI, Computer GUI, Touch-Screen GUI etc. Here is a list of few tools which come
handy to build GUI:

 FLUID
 AppInventor (Android)
 LucidChart
 Wavemaker
 Visual Studio

User Interface Golden rules

The following rules are mentioned to be the golden rules for GUI design, described by
Shneiderman and Plaisant in their book (Designing the User Interface).
  Strive for consistency - Consistent sequences of actions should be required in similar
situations. Identical terminology should be used in prompts, menus, and help screens.
Consistent commands should be employed throughout.
 Enable frequent users to use short-cuts - The user’s desire to reduce the number of
interactions increases with the frequency of use. Abbreviations, function keys, hidden
commands, and macro facilities are very helpful to an expert user.
 Offer informative feedback - For every operator action, there should be some system
feedback. For frequent and minor actions, the response must be modest, while for
infrequent and major actions, the response must be more substantial.
 Design dialog to yield closure - Sequences of actions should be organized into groups
with a beginning, middle, and end. The informative feedback at the completion of a
group of actions gives the operators the satisfaction of accomplishment, a sense of relief,
the signal to drop contingency plans and options from their minds, and this indicates that
the way ahead is clear to prepare for the next group of actions.
 Offer simple error handling - As much as possible, design the system so the user will
not make a serious error. If an error is made, the system should be able to detect it and
offer simple, comprehensible mechanisms for handling the error.
 Permit easy reversal of actions - This feature relieves anxiety, since the user knows that
errors can be undone. Easy reversal of actions encourages exploration of unfamiliar
options. The units of reversibility may be a single action, a data entry, or a complete
group of actions.
 Support internal locus of control - Experienced operators strongly desire the sense that
they are in charge of the system and that the system responds to their actions. Design the
system to make users the initiators of actions rather than the responders.
 Reduce short-term memory load - The limitation of human information processing in
short-term memory requires the displays to be kept simple, multiple page displays be
consolidated, window-motion frequency be reduced, and sufficient training time be
allotted for codes, mnemonics, and sequences of actions.

Software Design Complexity

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The term complexity stands for state of events or things, which have multiple interconnected
links and highly complicated structures. In software programming, as the design of software is
realized, the number of elements and their interconnections gradually emerge to be huge, which
becomes too difficult to understand at once.

Software design complexity is difficult to assess without using complexity metrics and measures.
Let us see three important software complexity measures.

Halstead's Complexity Measures

In 1977, Mr. Maurice Howard Halstead introduced metrics to measure software complexity.
Halstead’s metrics depends upon the actual implementation of program and its measures, which
are computed directly from the operators and operands from source code, in static manner. It
allows to evaluate testing time, vocabulary, size, difficulty, errors, and efforts for C/C++/Java
source code.

According to Halstead, “A computer program is an implementation of an algorithm considered to

be a collection of tokens which can be classified as either operators or operands”. Halstead
metrics think a program as sequence of operators and their associated operands.

He defines various indicators to check complexity of module.

Parameter Meaning

n1 Number of unique operators

n2 Number of unique operands

N1 Number of total occurrence of operators

N2 Number of total occurrence of operands

When we select source file to view its complexity details in Metric Viewer, the following result
is seen in Metric Report:

Metric Meaning Mathematical Representation

n Vocabulary n1 + n2

N Size N1 + N2

V Volume Length * Log2 Vocabulary

D Difficulty (n1/2) * (N1/n2)

E Efforts Difficulty * Volume

B Errors Volume / 3000

T Testing time Time = Efforts / S, where S=18 seconds.

Cyclomatic Complexity Measures

Every program encompasses statements to execute in order to perform some task and other
decision-making statements that decide, what statements need to be executed. These decision-
making constructs change the flow of the program.

If we compare two programs of same size, the one with more decision-making statements will be
more complex as the control of program jumps frequently.

McCabe, in 1976, proposed Cyclomatic Complexity Measure to quantify complexity of a given

software. It is graph driven model that is based on decision-making constructs of program such
as if-else, do-while, repeat-until, switch-case and goto statements.

Process to make flow control graph:

 Break program in smaller blocks, delimited by decision-making constructs.

 Create nodes representing each of these nodes.
 Connect nodes as follows:

o If control can branch from block i to block j

Draw an arc

o From exit node to entry node

Draw an arc.

To calculate Cyclomatic complexity of a program module, we use the formula -

V(G) = e – n + 2

Where
e is total number of edges
n is total number of nodes
The Cyclomatic complexity of the above module is

e = 10
n = 8
Cyclomatic Complexity = 10 - 8 + 2
= 4

According to P. Jorgensen, Cyclomatic Complexity of a module should not exceed 10.

Function Point

It is widely used to measure the size of software. Function Point concentrates on functionality
provided by the system. Features and functionality of the system are used to measure the
software complexity.

Function point counts on five parameters, named as External Input, External Output, Logical
Internal Files, External Interface Files, and External Inquiry. To consider the complexity of
software each parameter is further categorized as simple, average or complex.
Let us see parameters of function point:

External Input

Every unique input to the system, from outside, is considered as external input. Uniqueness of
input is measured, as no two inputs should have same formats. These inputs can either be data or
control parameters.

 Simple - if input count is low and affects less internal files

 Complex - if input count is high and affects more internal files
 Average - in-between simple and complex.

External Output

All output types provided by the system are counted in this category. Output is considered
unique if their output format and/or processing are unique.

 Simple - if output count is low

 Complex - if output count is high
 Average - in between simple and complex.

Logical Internal Files

Every software system maintains internal files in order to maintain its functional information and
to function properly. These files hold logical data of the system. This logical data may contain
both functional data and control data.
  Simple - if number of record types are low
 Complex - if number of record types are high
 Average - in between simple and complex.

External Interface Files

Software system may need to share its files with some external software or it may need to pass
the file for processing or as parameter to some function. All these files are counted as external
interface files.

 Simple - if number of record types in shared file are low

 Complex - if number of record types in shared file are high
 Average - in between simple and complex.

External Inquiry

An inquiry is a combination of input and output, where user sends some data to inquire about as
input and the system responds to the user with the output of inquiry processed. The complexity
of a query is more than External Input and External Output. Query is said to be unique if its input
and output are unique in terms of format and data.

 Simple - if query needs low processing and yields small amount of output data
 Complex - if query needs high process and yields large amount of output data
 Average - in between simple and complex.

Each of these parameters in the system is given weightage according to their class and
complexity. The table below mentions the weightage given to each parameter:

Parameter Simple Average Complex

Inputs 3 4 6

Outputs 4 5 7

Enquiry 3 4 6

Files 7 10 15

Interfaces 5 7 10

The table above yields raw Function Points. These function points are adjusted according to the
environment complexity. System is described using fourteen different characteristics:

 Data communications
 Distributed processing
 Performance objectives
  Operation configuration load
 Transaction rate
 Online data entry,
 End user efficiency
 Online update
 Complex processing logic
 Re-usability
 Installation ease
 Operational ease
 Multiple sites
 Desire to facilitate changes

These characteristics factors are then rated from 0 to 5, as mentioned below:

 No influence
 Incidental
 Moderate
 Average
 Significant
 Essential

All ratings are then summed up as N. The value of N ranges from 0 to 70 (14 types of
characteristics x 5 types of ratings). It is used to calculate Complexity Adjustment Factors
(CAF), using the following formulae:

CAF = 0.65 + 0.01N

Then,

Delivered Function Points (FP)= CAF x Raw FP

This FP can then be used in various metrics, such as:

Cost = $ / FP

Quality = Errors / FP

Productivity = FP / person-month

Software Implementation

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In this chapter, we will study about programming methods, documentation and challenges in
software implementation.

Structured Programming

In the process of coding, the lines of code keep multiplying, thus, size of the software increases.
Gradually, it becomes next to impossible to remember the flow of program. If one forgets how
software and its underlying programs, files, procedures are constructed it then becomes very
difficult to share, debug and modify the program. The solution to this is structured programming.
It encourages the developer to use subroutines and loops instead of using simple jumps in the
code, thereby bringing clarity in the code and improving its efficiency Structured programming
also helps programmer to reduce coding time and organize code properly.

Structured programming states how the program shall be coded. Structured programming uses
three main concepts:

 Top-down analysis - A software is always made to perform some rational work. This
rational work is known as problem in the software parlance. Thus it is very important that
we understand how to solve the problem. Under top-down analysis, the problem is
broken down into small pieces where each one has some significance. Each problem is
individually solved and steps are clearly stated about how to solve the problem.
 Modular Programming - While programming, the code is broken down into smaller
group of instructions. These groups are known as modules, subprograms or subroutines.
Modular programming based on the understanding of top-down analysis. It discourages
jumps using ‘goto’ statements in the program, which often makes the program flow non-
traceable. Jumps are prohibited and modular format is encouraged in structured
programming.
 Structured Coding - In reference with top-down analysis, structured coding sub-divides
the modules into further smaller units of code in the order of their execution. Structured
programming uses control structure, which controls the flow of the program, whereas
structured coding uses control structure to organize its instructions in definable patterns.

Functional Programming

Functional programming is style of programming language, which uses the concepts of

mathematical functions. A function in mathematics should always produce the same result on
receiving the same argument. In procedural languages, the flow of the program runs through
procedures, i.e. the control of program is transferred to the called procedure. While control flow
is transferring from one procedure to another, the program changes its state.
In procedural programming, it is possible for a procedure to produce different results when it is
called with the same argument, as the program itself can be in different state while calling it.
This is a property as well as a drawback of procedural programming, in which the sequence or
timing of the procedure execution becomes important.

Functional programming provides means of computation as mathematical functions, which

produces results irrespective of program state. This makes it possible to predict the behavior of
the program.

Functional programming uses the following concepts:

 First class and High-order functions - These functions have capability to accept
another function as argument or they return other functions as results.
 Pure functions - These functions do not include destructive updates, that is, they do not
affect any I/O or memory and if they are not in use, they can easily be removed without
hampering the rest of the program.
 Recursion - Recursion is a programming technique where a function calls itself and
repeats the program code in it unless some pre-defined condition matches. Recursion is
the way of creating loops in functional programming.
 Strict evaluation - It is a method of evaluating the expression passed to a function as an
argument. Functional programming has two types of evaluation methods, strict (eager) or
non-strict (lazy). Strict evaluation always evaluates the expression before invoking the
function. Non-strict evaluation does not evaluate the expression unless it is needed.
 λ-calculus - Most functional programming languages use λ-calculus as their type
systems. λ-expressions are executed by evaluating them as they occur.

Common Lisp, Scala, Haskell, Erlang and F# are some examples of functional programming
languages.

Programming style

Programming style is set of coding rules followed by all the programmers to write the code.
When multiple programmers work on the same software project, they frequently need to work
with the program code written by some other developer. This becomes tedious or at times
impossible, if all developers do not follow some standard programming style to code the
program.

An appropriate programming style includes using function and variable names relevant to the
intended task, using well-placed indentation, commenting code for the convenience of reader and
overall presentation of code. This makes the program code readable and understandable by all,
which in turn makes debugging and error solving easier. Also, proper coding style helps ease the
documentation and updation.
Coding Guidelines

Practice of coding style varies with organizations, operating systems and language of coding
itself.

The following coding elements may be defined under coding guidelines of an organization:

 Naming conventions - This section defines how to name functions, variables, constants
and global variables.
 Indenting - This is the space left at the beginning of line, usually 2-8 whitespace or
single tab.
 Whitespace - It is generally omitted at the end of line.
 Operators - Defines the rules of writing mathematical, assignment and logical operators.
For example, assignment operator ‘=’ should have space before and after it, as in “x = 2”.
 Control Structures - The rules of writing if-then-else, case-switch, while-until and for
control flow statements solely and in nested fashion.
 Line length and wrapping - Defines how many characters should be there in one line,
mostly a line is 80 characters long. Wrapping defines how a line should be wrapped, if is
too long.
 Functions - This defines how functions should be declared and invoked, with and
without parameters.
 Variables - This mentions how variables of different data types are declared and defined.
 Comments - This is one of the important coding components, as the comments included
in the code describe what the code actually does and all other associated descriptions.
This section also helps creating help documentations for other developers.

Software Documentation

Software documentation is an important part of software process. A well written document

provides a great tool and means of information repository necessary to know about software
process. Software documentation also provides information about how to use the product.

A well-maintained documentation should involve the following documents:

 Requirement documentation - This documentation works as key tool for software

designer, developer and the test team to carry out their respective tasks. This document
contains all the functional, non-functional and behavioral description of the intended
software.

Source of this document can be previously stored data about the software, already
running software at the client’s end, client’s interview, questionnaires and research.
Generally it is stored in the form of spreadsheet or word processing document with the
high-end software management team.
 This documentation works as foundation for the software to be developed and is majorly
used in verification and validation phases. Most test-cases are built directly from
requirement documentation.

 Software Design documentation - These documentations contain all the necessary

information, which are needed to build the software. It contains: (a) High-level software
architecture, (b) Software design details, (c) Data flow diagrams, (d) Database design

These documents work as repository for developers to implement the software. Though
these documents do not give any details on how to code the program, they give all
necessary information that is required for coding and implementation.

 Technical documentation - These documentations are maintained by the developers and

actual coders. These documents, as a whole, represent information about the code. While
writing the code, the programmers also mention objective of the code, who wrote it,
where will it be required, what it does and how it does, what other resources the code
uses, etc.

The technical documentation increases the understanding between various programmers

working on the same code. It enhances re-use capability of the code. It makes debugging
easy and traceable.

There are various automated tools available and some comes with the programming
language itself. For example java comes JavaDoc tool to generate technical
documentation of code.

 User documentation - This documentation is different from all the above explained. All
previous documentations are maintained to provide information about the software and
its development process. But user documentation explains how the software product
should work and how it should be used to get the desired results.

These documentations may include, software installation procedures, how-to guides,

user-guides, uninstallation method and special references to get more information like
license updation etc.

Software Implementation Challenges

There are some challenges faced by the development team while implementing the software.
Some of them are mentioned below:

 Code-reuse - Programming interfaces of present-day languages are very sophisticated

and are equipped huge library functions. Still, to bring the cost down of end product, the
organization management prefers to re-use the code, which was created earlier for some
other software. There are huge issues faced by programmers for compatibility checks and
deciding how much code to re-use.
  Version Management - Every time a new software is issued to the customer, developers
have to maintain version and configuration related documentation. This documentation
needs to be highly accurate and available on time.
 Target-Host - The software program, which is being developed in the organization,
needs to be designed for host machines at the customers end. But at times, it is impossible
to design a software that works on the target machines.

What is Software Quality Assurance?

When we talk about software quality, we are actually talking about the evaluation of the software
based on certain attributes. A software quality is defined based on the study of external and
internal features of the software. The external quality is defined based on how software performs
in real time scenario in operational mode and how useful it is for its users. The internal quality
on the other hand focuses on the intrinsic aspects that are dependent on the quality of the code
written. The user focuses more on how the software works at the external level, but the quality at
external level can be maintained only if the coder has written a meaningful good quality code.

Software Quality

What Is Software Quality Assurance?

Presently there are two important approaches that are used to determine the quality of the
software:

1. Defect Management Approach

2. Quality Attributes approach

As mentioned before anything that is not in line with the requirement of the client can be considered as
a defect. Many times the development team fails to fully understand the requirement of the client
which eventually leads to design error. Besides that, the error can be caused due to poor functional
logic, wrong coding or improper data handling. In order to keep a track of defect a defect management
approach can be applied. In defect management, categories of defects are defined based on severity.
The number of defects is counted and actions are taken as per the severity defined. Control charts can
be created to measure the development process capability.
 Defect Management Approach

Quality Attribute Approach on the other hand focuses on six quality characteristics that are listed
below:
 Quality Attributes Approach

1. Functionality: refers to complete set of important functions that are provided by the software

 Suitability: whether the functions of the software are appropriate

 Accurateness: are the functions implemented correctly?
 Interoperability: how does the software interact with other components of the system?
 Compliance: is the software in compliance with the necessary laws and guidelines?
 Security: Is the software able to handle data related transaction securely?

2. Reliability: this refers to the capability of software to perform under certain conditions for a defined
duration. This also defines the ability of the system to withstand component failure.

 Maturity: Frequency of failure of software

 Recoverability: this gives an idea of a system’s ability to get back into full operation after failure.

3. Usability: refers to the ease of use of a function.

 Understandability: how easily the functions can be understood

 Learn ability: How much effort the users of different level need to put in to understand the
functions.
4. Efficiency: generally depends on good architecture and coding practices followed while developing
software.

5. Maintainability: also known as supportability. It is greatly dependant on code readability and

complexity and refers to the ability to identify and fix a fault in a software:

 Analyzability: identification of the main cause of failure.

 Changeability: defines the effort that goes in modification of code to remove a fault.
 Stability: how stable a system is in its performance when there are changes made to it
 Testability: how much effort goes in testing the system.

6. Portability: Ability of the system to adopt to changes in its environment

 Adaptability: how easily a system adapts to the changes made in specifications

 Installability: how easily a system can be installed.
 Conformance: this is same as compliance in functionality.
 Replaceability: how easy it is to replace a component of the system in a given environment.

Cost of Software Quality Cost of quality is important because when you decide to conduct
software testing for your product you are actually going to invest your time, money and effort in
getting quality checks done. By conducting an analysis of cost of software quality you would
know what the return on that investment (ROI) is.

Cost of Software Quality

Cost of quality is calculated by analyzing the conformance costs and non conformance costs. A
conformance cost is related to:

1. Prevention costs: amount spent on ensuring that all quality assurance practices are followed
correctly. This includes tasks like training the team, code reviews and any other QA related
activity etc.
2. Appraisal costs: this is the amount of money spent on planning all the test activities and then
carrying them out such as developing test cases and then executing them.

The non conformance cost on the other hand is the expense that arises due to:

1. Internal failures: it is theexpense that arises when test cases are executed for the first time at
internal level and some of them fail. The expenses arise when the programmer has to rectify all
the defects uncovered from his piece of code at the time of unit or component testing.
2. External failures: it is the expense that occurs when the defect is found by the customer instead
of the tester. These expenses are much more than what arise at internal level, especially if the
customer gets unsatisfied or escalates the software failure.

Cost of Software Failure We know that a software failure is caused when:

1. It displayslack of ability to keep up: this generally happens when the software starts aging. As it
grows old the size increases because the easiest way of adding a feature is by adding new code
without touching anypart of code written earlier. Over a period of time it becomes bulky and it
becomes difficult to identify the sections of code that need to be changed.
2. Performance drop is observed: Every application generally slows down with age and tends to
occupy more and more computer memory therefore it is better to switch to other software.
3. It doesn’t seem to be reliable: It is a known fact that every time when changes are made to the
code of the software to fix an error, more defects are introduced in the system. Surprisingly, this
is one of the major reasons for increased failure rates and in order to save situation it is always
better to ditch the project or give up bug fixing.

Software Testing VS Quality Assurance In IT industry it is often observed that people generally don’t
differentiate between the software quality assurance and software testing. Testers are often looked
upon as Software Quality Assurance professionals because the objectives of software testing as well as
quality assurance are the same .i.e. to ensure that the software is of top quality.
As the name suggests quality assurance processes are carried out to assure the quality of the product is
in line with the requirement of the client. The quality assurance professionals work on development and
implementation of all the necessary processes to ensure that all the necessary procedures of software
development lifecycle are followed correctly. Quality assurance is a proactive activity that is focused on:

1. Defect Prevention
2. Processes
3. Continuous improvement of this processes
Software testing on the other hand is carried to identify or uncover defect and errors in the software. It
involves actual rigorous testing of the software to see if there are any defects or variations from the
client’s requirement that needs to be fixed. Software testing is a part of quality control process and it
focuses only on product oriented activities. Software testing is carried out during the testing phase and
only defects are identified and not corrected in this process. Fixing defects is not a part of software
testing.

Quality Assurance VS Quality Control Another subject that is closely related to quality
assurance is quality control. People often get confused between the two but there is a huge
difference. While quality assurance is all about preventive activities, quality control focuses on
corrective processes.
Here is what you need to understand: software testing is a subset of quality control and quality
control is a subset of quality assurance. Theentire focus of Quality assurance is on
implementation of processes and procedures that are required for the verification of the software
under development and the requirements of the client.

Quality Assurance VS Quality Control

Quality control on the other hand deals with actual activities that ensure that the product is being
developed as per the defined requirements. It deals with all the actions that are important to
control and verify certain characteristics of the product including testing. Examination and
testing of the products is the most important aspect of quality control.

Companies employ quality control team to identify if there is any product or service that does not
meet the company’s standard of quality. If there is an issue the quality control team has the
authority to stop the production of that product till the issue is resolved.
Importance of Audit and Inspection

Audit comprises of some very systematic processes that define how the software testing is taking
place in the organization. The audit team examines all the processes that are conducted at the
time of testing. IEEE defines audit as a review of documented processes to ensure that the
organization or a team is following all the processes as per the defined standards.

Inspection can be a formal or an informal review of software requirement, designer or code. It is

conducted by a team or an individual person other than the author to check if there are any
violations or deviations from the defined development standards. The following processes are
considered as part of Inspection:

1. Planning
2. Overview Preparation
3. Inspection Meeting
4. Rework
5. Follow up