L02 - Software Processes

Software Processes
• Software process models

• Process activities
• Coping with change
• Process improvement
Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 1
1
The software process
 Software processes are a set of related activities involved in

producing a software system.
 There is no universal software engineering method for different
software systems type, but
 Fundamental software engineering activities are:
 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.
 Activities are complex and include sub-activities such as
requirements validation, architectural design, unit testing, etc.
 Process descriptions may also include:
 Products or deliverables, which are the outcomes of a process
activity; e.g a model of the software architecture
 Roles, which reflect the responsibilities of the people involved in
the process; e.g project manager, configuration manager, programmer
 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 continual
as the software develops and it is easier to change the
process to reflect changing customer requirements.
 For safety-critical systems, a very structured development
process is required. For business systems, with rapidly
changing requirements, a more flexible, agile process is
likely to be better
 There are no right or wrong software processes.
 In practice, most practical processes include elements of
both plan-driven andCSEagile
Dr. Noha Adly
approaches.
322 - Software Processes 4
4
Software process models
 The waterfall model

 Plan-driven model. Separate and distinct phases of specification
and development.
 Incremental development
 Specification, development and validation are interleaved. May
be plan-driven or agile.
 Integration and configuration
 The system is assembled from existing configurable
components. May be plan-driven or agile.
 In practice, most large systems are developed using a
process that incorporates elements from all of these
models.
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The waterfall model
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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
• All Process activities must be planned and scheduled before
starting development
• Result of each phase is one or more documents that are approved
(‘signed off’).
• The following phase should not start until the previous phase has
finished.
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The Waterfall Model
 The main drawback of the waterfall model is the difficulty

of accommodating change after the process is underway.
 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. E.g. Embedded systems and Critical safety
systems
 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.
8
Incremental development
• Based on the idea of developing an initial implementation, exposing this to user comment
and evolving it through several versions until an adequate system has been developed
• Specification, development, and validation activities are interleaved rather than separate,
with rapid feedback across activities.
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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.
 Regular change leads to messy code
 Increasingly costly to add new features
 Unless time and money is spent on refactoring to improve the
software, regular change tends to corrupt its structure.
 Acute for large complex systems
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Integration and configuration
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 (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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Advantages and disadvantages
Advantages
 Reduced costs and risks as less software is
developed from scratch
 Faster delivery and deployment of system
Disadvantages
 requirements compromises are inevitable so system
may not meet real needs of users
 Loss of control over evolution of reused system
elements
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Process activities
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Process activities
 Real software processes are inter-leaved sequences of

technical, collaborative and managerial activities with the
overall goal of specifying, designing, implementing and
testing a software system.
 The four basic process activities of
 Specification
 Development
 Validation
 Evolution
are organized differently in different development processes.
 In the waterfall model, they are organized in sequence,
whereas in incremental development they are interleaved
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Software specification
 The process of establishing what services are required and identifying

the constraints on the system’s operation and development.
 Requirements engineering is the process of developing a software
specification.
 Critical stage as a mistake leads to later problem in design and
implementation
 A feasibility study is carried out before the requirement engineering to
assess whether there is a market need and whether it is realistic
technically and financially
 Requirements are usually presented at two levels of detail.
 End-users and customers with a high-level statement of the requirements
 System developers with a more detailed system specification.
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Requirement Engineering Activities
 Requirements elicitation and analysis

 What do the system stakeholders require or expect from the system?
 Done through observation of existing systems, discussions with potential
users and procurers, task analysis, and so on.
 may involve the development of system models and prototypes.
 Requirements specification
 Defining the requirements in detail trough translation of information
gathered during the analysis activity
 Two types of requirements may be included
• User requirements: abstract statements of the system
• system requirements: more detailed description of the functionality
 Requirements validation
 Checking the validity of the requirements for realism, consistency, and
completeness.
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The requirements engineering process
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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;
 Describe data models and structures
 Define interfaces between components
 Design is developed in stages with constant backtracking
 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 Inputs
 Most software interfaces with other software systems. These include

the operating system, database, middleware, and other application
systems. These make up the ‘software platform’, the environment
in which the software will execute.
 Information about this platform is an essential input to the design
process, as designers must decide how best to integrate it with the
software’s environment.
 The requirements specification is a description of the functionality
the software must provide and its performance and dependability
requirements.
 If the system is to process existing data, then the description of that
data may be included in the platform specification; otherwise, the
data description must be an input to the design process so that the
system data organization to be defined.
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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.
 The design process activities are both interleaved and
interdependent.
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A general model of the design process
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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.
26
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 Validation technique.
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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 interactions between components
 Showing that the system meets its functional and non functional
requirements
 Testing of emergent properties.
 Customer testing: Testing with real data to check that the system meets
the customer’s needs. (Alpha and Beta testing)
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Testing phases in a plan-driven software

process (V-model)
• Testing is driven by a set of plans
• Independent team of testers work from these pre-formulated test plans
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Software evolution
 Software is inherently flexible and can change –

compared to hardware system
 As requirements change through changing business
circumstances, the software that supports the business
must also evolve and change.
 Although there has been a split between development
and evolution (maintenance) - this is increasingly
irrelevant as very few systems are completely new.
 it makes much more sense to see development and
maintenance as a continuum
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System evolution
Rather than two separate processes, it is more realistic to think of

software engineering as an evolutionary process where software is
continually changed over its lifetime in response to changing
requirements and customer needs.
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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
 Whatever software process model is used, it is essential
that it can accommodate changes to the software
 Change leads to rework so the costs of change include
both rework (e.g. re-analysing requirements) as well as
the costs of implementing new functionality
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Reducing the costs of rework
 Change anticipation, where the software process

includes activities that can anticipate possible changes
before significant rework is required.
 For example, a prototype system may be developed to show
some key features of the system to customers. They can
experiment with the prototype and refine their requirements
before committing to high software production costs.
 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 to be altered to
incorporate the change.
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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 to anticipate changes in:
 The requirements engineering process to help with
requirements elicitation and validation;
 In design processes to
• explore software solutions
• development of a UI design for the system
 In the testing process to run back-to-back tests.
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Software prototyping
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Com m u n icat io n plan

communication
Modeling
Mo d e li n g
Q u ic k d e si g n
Quick design
Deployment
Deployment
D e live r y
delivery & Co n st r uct io n
& Fe e db ack Construction
feedback of
of
p r oprototype
t o t yp e
 May be based on rapid prototyping languages or tools

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The process model of prototype development
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Prototype development
 Decide objective of prototype before start

 E.g. To develop user interface, Validate some functional system
requirements, demonstrate applications to managers, etc
 The same prototype cannot meet all objectives.
 If the objectives are left unstated, management or end-users may
misunderstand the function of the prototype. Consequently, they
may not get the benefits that they expected from the prototype
development.
 Decide on functionality to include and what to leave out
 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.
 increments are delivered and deployed for use in a real operational
environment
 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.
 Experimenting with the system helps them clarify their requirements for
later system increments
 Architectural design must be open and completed before the
implementation for the various increments commences.
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 One of the main advantages of the incremental models

is their ability to cope with change during the
development of the system.
 As an example, consider an error in the requirements.
 With the waterfall model, the error may not be noticed until
acceptance testing, when it is probably too late to correct it.
(Note that the client probably does not see the software running
until the acceptance tests.)
 In the incremental model, there is a good chance that a
requirements error will be recognized as soon as the
corresponding software is incorporated into the system.
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Incremental delivery advantages
 Customer value can be delivered with each increment so

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

have less functionality than the system being replaced.
 Most systems require a set of basic facilities that are used
by different parts of the system.
 As requirements are not defined in detail until an increment is to be
implemented, it can be hard to identify common facilities that are
needed by all increments.
 The essence of iterative processes is that the specification
is developed in conjunction with the software.
 However, this conflicts with the procurement model of many
organizations, where the complete system specification is part of
the system development contract.
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Process improvement
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Process improvement
 Process improvement means understanding existing

processes and changing these processes to increase
product quality and/or reduce costs and development
time.
 Many software companies have turned to software
process improvement as a way of enhancing the quality
of their software, reducing costs or accelerating their
development processes.
 The principal approaches to process improvement are
agile approaches, geared to reducing process
overheads, and maturity-based approaches based on
better process management and the use of good
software engineering practice.
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Approaches to improvement
 The process maturity approach, which focuses on

improving process and project management and
introducing good software engineering practice
 The level of process maturity reflects the extent to which good
technical and management practice has been adopted in
organizational software development processes.
 The agile approach, which focuses on iterative
development and the reduction of overheads in the
software process.
 The primary characteristics of agile methods are rapid delivery of
functionality and responsiveness to changing customer
requirements.
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The process improvement cycle
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Process improvement activities
 Process measurement
 You measure one or more attributes of the software process or
product. These measurements forms a baseline that helps you
decide if process improvements have been effective.
 Process analysis
 The current process is assessed, and process weaknesses and
bottlenecks are identified. Process models (sometimes called
process maps) that describe the process may be developed.
 Process change
 Process changes are proposed to address some of the identified
process weaknesses. These are introduced and the cycle
resumes to collect data about the effectiveness of the changes.
51
Process measurement
 Wherever possible, quantitative process data should be collected

 However, where organisations do not have clearly defined process
standards this is very difficult as you don’t know what to measure. A
process may have to be defined before any measurement is possible.
 Process measurements should be used to assess process
improvements
 But this does not mean that measurements should drive the
improvements. The improvement driver should be the organizational
objectives.
 Process metrics
 Time taken for process activities to be completed e.g Calendar time or
effort to complete an activity or process
 Resources required for processes or activities e.g. Total effort in person-
days
 Number of occurrences of a particular event e.g. Number of defects
discovered
52
Software Engineering Institute (SEI)
Capability maturity levels
 The SEI process maturity
framework identifies maturity
levels that essentially correspond
to the use of good software
engineering practice.
 The maturity of a software
company processes reflects the
process management,
measurement and use of good
software engineering practice in
the company
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The SEI capability maturity model

 Initial - Essentially uncontrolled: goals associated with the process are satisfied,
the scope of work to is explicitly set out and communicated to the team members
 Managed - Product management procedures defined and used: goals

associated with the process are met and organizational policies are in place that define
when each process should be used. There must be documented project plans that define
the project goals. Resource management and process monitoring procedures must be in
place across the institution.
 Defined - Process management procedures and strategies defined and

used: Each project has a managed process, adapted to the requirements from a defined
set of organizational processes. Process assets and measurements must be collected and
used for future process improvements.
 Quantitatively Managed - Quantitative management strategies

defined and used: there is an organizational responsibility to use statistical and other
quantitative methods to control sub-processes
 Optimising - Process improvement strategies defined and used: Trends

must be analyzed and the processes adapted to changing business needs.
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Process Assessment and Improvement
 CMM-Based Appraisal for Internal Process Improvement (CBA IPI)—

provides a diagnostic technique for assessing the relative maturity of a
software organization; uses the SEI CMM as the basis for the
assessment
 Standard CMMI Assessment Method for Process Improvement (SCAMPI)
— provides a five step process assessment model that incorporates five
phases: initiating, diagnosing, establishing, acting and learning.
 SPICE—The SPICE (ISO/IEC15504) standard defines a set of
requirements for software process assessment. The intent of the
standard is to assist organizations in developing an objective evaluation
of the efficacy of any defined software process.
 ISO 9001:2000 for Software—a generic standard that applies to any
organization that wants to improve the overall quality of the products,
systems, or services that it provides. Therefore, the standard is directly
applicable to software organizations and companies.
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The Rational Unified Process
 RUP is a very general iterative software development process

framework based on UML.
 It is a hybrid process model that brings together elements from
 All of the generic process models (Waterfall and Incremental)
 illustrates good practice in specification and design
 Supports prototyping and incremental delivery.
 The activities of (requirements, design, implementation, test, etc.)
exist in RUP, but they may occur many times during development.
 For example, requirements may be derived for each component many
times instead of once only for the entire product.
 Normally described from 3 perspectives
 A dynamic perspective that shows phases over time;
 A static perspective that shows process activities;
 A practice perspective that suggests good practice.
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RUP Phases
 A development cycle in RUP has four phases. Each phase

usually done in one or more iteration. The end of each phase
is marked by a milestone.
 Inception: Create a business case for the project; may involve
requirements analysis, risk analysis, prototyping. Milestone:
(Objectives)
 Elaboration. Develop and analyze models for the S/W; project
development plans, identify risks, user documentation, release
description. Milestone: (requirement model, Architecture,
development plan)
 Construction. System design, Coding and quality assurance.
Milestone: (Operational Capability)
 Transition. Transfer the program or component to the user;
ensure that the user has adequate documentation and other
resources to make use of it. Milestone: (Release)
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RUP iteration
 Iteration within the RUP is supported in two ways

 In-phase iteration: Each phase is iterative with results developed
incrementally.
 Cross-phase iteration As shown by the loop in the RUP model,
the whole set of phases may be enacted incrementally.
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Static workflows in the RUP
 The static view of the RUP focuses on the activities that

take place during the development process
 These are called workflows
 There are six core process workflows identified in the
process and three core supporting workflows.
 There are two main families of RUP workflows
 Engineering
 Management
 The RUP has been designed in conjunction with the
UML, so the workflow description is oriented around
associated UML models such as sequence models,
object models, etc.
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Static workflows in the RUP - Core
Workflow Description
Business The business processes are modelled using business use cases.
modelling
Requirements Actors who interact with the system are identified and use cases
are developed to model the system requirements.
Analysis and A design model is created and documented using architectural
design models, component models, object models and sequence models.
Implementation The components in the system are implemented and structured into
implementation sub-systems. Automatic code generation from
design models helps accelerate this process.
Testing Testing is an iterative process that is carried out in conjunction with

implementation. System testing follows the completion of the
implementation.
Deployment A product release is created, distributed to users and installed in

their workplace.
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Static workflows in the RUP – (Supporting
Management)
Workflow Description
Configuration and This supporting workflow managed changes to the
change system
management
Project This supporting workflow manages the system
management development
Environment This workflow is concerned with making appropriate
software tools available to the software development
team.
The advantage in presenting dynamic and static views is that phases of

the development process are not associated with specific workflows. So,
all of the RUP workflows may be active at all stages of the process.
• In the early phases of the process, most effort will probably be
spent on workflows such as business modelling and requirements
• in the later phases, in testing and deployment.
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RUP – Phases versus Workflows
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RUP good software engineering practice

– six practices recommended
 Develop software iteratively Plan increments based on customer priorities
and deliver highest priority increments first.
 Manage requirements Explicitly document customer requirements and keep
track of changes to these requirements. Analyze the impact of changes on the
system before accepting them.
 Use component-based architectures Organize the system architecture as a
set of reusable components.
 Visually model software Use graphical UML models to present static and
dynamic views of the software
 Verify software quality Ensure that the software meet’s organizational quality
standards.
 Control changes to software Manage software changes using a change
management system and configuration management tools.
63

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Software Processes

• Software process models

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 1

 Software processes are a set of related activities involved in

Software process descriptions

 When we describe and discuss processes, we usually talk

Plan-driven and agile processes

 The waterfall model

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 5

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 6

Waterfall model phases

 There are separate identified phases in the waterfall model:

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 7

The Waterfall Model

 The main drawback of the waterfall model is the difficulty

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 9

 The cost of accommodating changing customer

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 10

Incremental development problems

 The process is not visible.

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 11

Integration and configuration

Based on software reuse where systems are

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 12

Stand-alone application systems (COTS) that

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 13

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 15

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 16

 Real software processes are inter-leaved sequences of

 The process of establishing what services are required and identifying

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 18

 Requirements elicitation and analysis

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 19

The requirements engineering process

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 20

Software design and implementation

 The process of converting the system specification into

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 21

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 22

 Most software interfaces with other software systems. These include

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 23

 Architectural design, where you identify the overall structure of

A general model of the design process

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 25

 The software is implemented either by developing a

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 26

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

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 27

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 28

Testing phases in a plan-driven software

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 29

 Software is inherently flexible and can change –

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 30

Rather than two separate processes, it is more realistic to think of

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 31

Coping with change

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 32

Coping with change

 Change is inevitable in all large software projects.

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 33

 Change anticipation, where the software process

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

Dr. Noha Adly CSE 322 - Software Processes 36

Com m u n icat io n plan