BITS Pilani

Pilani Campus

Software Quality Management

Lecture # 2: Introduction to Software Processes
Software Processes

 Software process models

 Process activities

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The Software Process

 A structured set of activities required to develop a

software system.
 Many different software processes, but all involve:
 Specification – defining what the system should do;
 Design and implementation – defining the organization of the
system and implementing the system;
 Validation – checking that it does what the customer wants;
 Evolution – changing the system in response to changing
customer needs.
 A software process model is an abstract
representation of a process. It presents a description
of a process from some particular perspective.
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Software Process descriptions

 When we describe and discuss processes, we usually

talk about the activities in these processes such as
specifying a data model, designing a user interface, etc.
and the ordering of these activities.
 Process descriptions may also include:
 Products, which are the outcomes of a process activity;
 Roles, which reflect the responsibilities of the people involved in
the process;
 Pre- and post-conditions, which are statements that are true
before and after a process activity has been enacted or a
product produced.

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Plan-driven and Agile processes

 Plan-driven processes are processes where all of the

process activities are planned in advance and progress
is measured against this plan.
 In agile processes, planning is incremental and it is
easier to change the process to reflect changing
customer requirements.
 In practice, most practical processes include elements of
both plan-driven and agile approaches.
 There are no right or wrong software processes.

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 Software Process models

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Software Process models

 The Waterfall model

 Plan-driven model. Separate and distinct phases of specification
and development.
 Incremental development
 Specification, development and validation are interleaved. May
be plan-driven or agile.
 Integration and Configuration (Reuse-oriented)
 The system is assembled from existing configurable
components. May be plan-driven or agile.
 In practice, most large systems are developed using a process that
incorporates elements from all of these models.

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The Waterfall model

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Waterfall model phases

 There are separate identified phases in the waterfall

model:
 Requirements Analysis and Definition
 System and Software Design
 Implementation and Unit Testing
 Integration and System Testing
 Operation and Maintenance
 The main drawback of the waterfall model is the difficulty
of accommodating change after the process is underway.
In principle, a phase has to be complete before moving
onto the next phase.

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Waterfall model problems

 Inflexible partitioning of the project into distinct stages

makes it difficult to respond to changing customer
requirements.
 Therefore, this model is only appropriate when the requirements
are well-understood and changes will be fairly limited during the
design process.
 Few business systems have stable requirements.
 The Waterfall model is mostly used for large systems
engineering projects where a system is developed at
several sites.
 In those circumstances, the plan-driven nature of the waterfall
model helps coordinate the work.

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Incremental development

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Incremental development: Benefits

 The cost of accommodating changing customer

requirements is reduced.
 The amount of analysis and documentation that has to be
redone is much less than is required with the waterfall model.
 It is easier to get customer feedback on the development
work that has been done.
 Customers can comment on demonstrations of the software and
see how much has been implemented.
 More rapid delivery and deployment of useful software to
the customer is possible.
 Customers are able to use and gain value from the software
earlier than is possible with a waterfall process.
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Incremental development: Problems

 The process is not visible.

 Managers need regular deliverables to measure progress. If
systems are developed quickly, it is not cost-effective to produce
documents that reflect every version of the system.
 System structure tends to degrade as new increments
are added.
 Unless time and money is spent on refactoring to improve the
software, regular change tends to corrupt its structure.
Incorporating further software changes becomes increasingly
difficult and costly.

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Integration and Configuration (Reuse-oriented)

 Based on software reuse where systems are integrated

from existing components or application systems
(sometimes called COTS -Commercial-off-the-shelf)
systems).
 Reused elements may be configured to adapt their
behaviour and functionality to a user’s requirements.
 Reuse is now the standard approach for building many
types of business system.

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Types of reusable software

 Stand-alone application systems (sometimes called

COTS) that are configured for use in a particular
environment.
 Collections of objects that are developed as a package
to be integrated with a component framework such
as .NET or J2EE.
 Web services that are developed according to service
standards and which are available for remote invocation.

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Reuse-oriented software engineering

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Key process stages of
Reuse-oriented development

1. Requirements specification
2. Software discovery and evaluation
3. Requirements refinement
4. Application system configuration
5. Component adaptation and integration

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Reuse-oriented development:
Advantages and disadvantages

 Reduced costs and risks as less software is developed

from scratch.
 Faster delivery and deployment of system.
 But requirements compromises are inevitable so system
may not meet real needs of users.
 Loss of control over evolution of reused system
elements.

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 Sofware Process activities

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Software Process activities

 Real software processes are inter-leaved sequences

of technical, collaborative and managerial activities
with the overall goal of specifying, designing,
implementing and testing a software system.
 The four basic process activities of Specification,
Development, Validation and Evolution are organized
differently in different development processes.
 For example, in the Waterfall model, they are organized
in sequence, whereas in Incremental development
they are interleaved.

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The Requirements Engineering process

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Software Specification

 The process of establishing what services are required

and the constraints on the system’s operation and
development.
 Requirements engineering process
 Requirements elicitation and analysis
• What do the system stakeholders require or expect from the system?
 Requirements specification
• Defining the requirements in detail
 Requirements validation
• Checking the validity of the requirements

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Software Design and Implementation

 The process of converting the system specification into

an executable system.
 Software Design
 Design a software structure that realises the specification;
 Implementation
 Translate this structure into an executable program;
 The activities of design and implementation are closely
related and may be inter-leaved.

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A general model of the design process

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Design activities
 Architectural design, where you identify the overall
structure of the system, the principal components
(subsystems or modules), their relationships and how
they are distributed.
 Database design, where you design the system data
structures and how these are to be represented in a
database.
 Interface design, where you define the interfaces
between system components.
 Component selection and design, where you search
for reusable components. If unavailable, you design how
it will operate.
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System Implementation

 The software is implemented either by developing a

program or programs or by configuring an application
system.
 Design and implementation are interleaved activities
for most types of software system.
 Programming is an individual activity with no standard
process.
 Debugging is the activity of finding program faults and
correcting these faults.

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Software Validation

 Verification and Validation (V & V) is intended to show

that a system conforms to its specification and meets the
requirements of the system customer.
 Involves checking and review processes and system
testing.
 System testing involves executing the system with test
cases that are derived from the specification of the real
data to be processed by the system.
 Testing is the most commonly used V & V activity.

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Stages of Testing

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Testing stages

 Component testing
 Individual components are tested independently;
 Components may be functions or objects or coherent groupings
of these entities.
 System testing
 Testing of the system as a whole. Testing of emergent properties
is particularly important.
 Customer testing
 Testing with customer data to check that the system meets the
customer’s needs.

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Testing phases in a
Plan-driven software process (V-model)

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Software evolution

 Software is inherently flexible and can change.

 As requirements change through changing business
circumstances, the software that supports the business
must also evolve and change.
 Although there has been a demarcation between
development and evolution (maintenance) this is
increasingly irrelevant as fewer and fewer systems are
completely new.

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System evolution

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Software Processes: Key Points (1 / 2)

 Software processes are the activities involved in

producing a software system.
 Software process models are abstract representations of
these processes.
 General process models describe the organization of
software processes.
 Examples of these general models include the ‘Waterfall’ model,
Incremental development, and Reuse-oriented development.
 Requirements engineering is the process of developing
a software specification.

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Software Processes: Key Points (2 / 2)
 Design and implementation processes are concerned
with transforming a requirements specification into an
executable software system.
 Software validation is the process of checking that the
system conforms to its specification and that it meets the
real needs of the users of the system.
 Software evolution takes place when you change
existing software systems to meet new requirements.
The software must evolve to remain useful.
 Processes should include activities such as prototyping
and incremental delivery to cope with change.

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 Coping with change

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Coping with change

 Change is inevitable in all large software projects.

 Business changes lead to new and changed system
requirements
 New technologies open up new possibilities for improving
implementations
 Changing platforms require application changes
 Change leads to rework so the costs of change include
both rework (e.g. re-analyzing requirements) as well as
the costs of implementing new functionality

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Reducing the costs of rework

 Change anticipation, where the software process

includes activities that can anticipate possible changes
before significant rework is required.
 For example, a prototype system may be developed to show
some key features of the system to customers.
 Change tolerance, where the process is designed so
that changes can be accommodated at relatively low
cost.
 This normally involves some form of incremental development.
Proposed changes may be implemented in increments that have
not yet been developed. If this is impossible, then only a single
increment (a small part of the system) may have be altered to
incorporate the change.
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Coping with changing requirements

 System prototyping, where a version of the system or

part of the system is developed quickly to check the
customer’s requirements and the feasibility of design
decisions. This approach supports change anticipation.
 Incremental delivery, where system increments are
delivered to the customer for comment and
experimentation. This supports both change avoidance
and change tolerance.

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Software prototyping

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

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

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Benefits of prototyping

 Improved system usability.

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

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The process of prototype development

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Prototype development

 May be based on rapid prototyping languages or tools

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

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Throw-away prototypes

 Prototypes should be discarded after development as

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

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Incremental delivery

 Rather than deliver the system as a single delivery, the

development and delivery is broken down into
increments with each increment delivering part of the
required functionality.
 User requirements are prioritised and the highest
priority requirements are included in early increments.
 Once the development of an increment is started, the
requirements are frozen though requirements for later
increments can continue to evolve.

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Incremental development and delivery

 Incremental development
 Develop the system in increments and evaluate each increment
before proceeding to the development of the next increment;
 Normal approach used in agile methods;
 Evaluation done by user/customer proxy.

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

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Incremental delivery

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Incremental delivery: Advantages

 Customer value can be delivered with each increment so

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

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Incremental delivery: Problems

 Most systems require a set of basic facilities that are

used by different parts of the system.
 As requirements are not defined in detail until an increment is to
be implemented, it can be hard to identify common facilities that
are needed by all increments.
 The essence of iterative processes is that the
specification is developed in conjunction with the
software.
 However, this conflicts with the procurement model of many
organizations, where the complete system specification is part of
the system development contract.

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Software Processes: Key Points (1 / 3)

 Software processes are the activities involved in

producing a software system.
 Software process models are abstract representations of
these processes.
 General process models describe the organization of
software processes.
 Examples of these general models include the ‘Waterfall’ model,
Incremental development, and Reuse-oriented development.
 Requirements engineering is the process of developing
a software specification.

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Software Processes: Key Points (2 / 3)
 Design and implementation processes are concerned
with transforming a requirements specification into an
executable software system.
 Software validation is the process of checking that the
system conforms to its specification and that it meets the
real needs of the users of the system.
 Software evolution takes place when you change
existing software systems to meet new requirements.
The software must evolve to remain useful.
 Processes should include activities such as prototyping
and incremental delivery to cope with change.

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Software Processes: Key Points (3 / 3)

 Processes may be structured for iterative development

and delivery so that changes may be made without
disrupting the system as a whole.

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