Chapter 2 – Software Processes

Chapter 2 Software Processes 1

Topics covered

 Software process models

 Process activities
 Coping with change
 The Rational Unified Process
 An example of a modern software process.

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The software process

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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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The waterfall model

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Waterfall model phases

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Waterfall model problems

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Incremental development

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Incremental development benefits

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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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Reuse-oriented software engineering

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Reuse-oriented software engineering

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Process activities

 Real software processes are inter-leaved sequences of

technical, collaborative and managerial activities with the
overall goal of specifying, designing, implementing and
testing a software system.
 The four basic process activities of specification,
development, validation and evolution are organized
differently in different development processes. In the
waterfall model, they are organized in sequence,
whereas in incremental development they are inter-
leaved.

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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
 Feasibility study
• Is it technically and financially feasible to build the system?
 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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The requirements engineering process

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Software design and implementation

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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
(sometimes called sub-systems or modules), their
relationships and how they are distributed.
 Interface design, where you define the interfaces
between system components.
 Component design, where you take each system
component and design how it will operate.
 Database design, where you design the system data
structures and how these are to be represented in a
database.
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Software validation

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Stages of testing

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Testing stages

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Testing phases in a plan-driven software process

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Software evolution

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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 avoidance, 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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Software prototyping

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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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Benefits of prototyping

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The process of prototype development

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Key points

 Processes should include activities to cope with change.

This may involve a prototyping phase that helps avoid
poor decisions on requirements and design.
 Processes may be structured for iterative development
and delivery so that changes may be made without
disrupting the system as a whole.
 The Rational Unified Process is a modern generic
process model that is organized into phases (inception,
elaboration, construction and transition) but separates
activities (requirements, analysis and design, etc.) from
these phases.

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Key points

 Software processes are the activities involved in

producing a software system. Software process models
are abstract representations of these processes.
 General process models describe the organization of
software processes. Examples of these general models
include the ‘waterfall’ model, incremental development,
and reuse-oriented development.

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Key points

 Requirements engineering is the process of developing a

software specification.
 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.
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