Introduction to Software

Engineering

Lecture 3

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Lecture Objectives
 Software processes and their principle
characteristics.
 Generic software process models
 Waterfall model
 Evolutionary development
 Component based system development

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What is a software process?
 A set of ordered tasks to produce indented
output of some kind
 Involving activates,
constraints; and
 Resources
 The process of building a software product
 Life cycle - describes the life of the software from
conception through its implementation, delivery,
use and maintenance.

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Why we need software process?
 Common understanding of the activities,
resources and constraints involved in
software development.
 Creating processes helps
 Find inconsistencies,
 Redundancies; and
 Omissions

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Generic software process
models
 The waterfall model
 Separate and distinct phases of specification
and development.
 Evolutionary development
 Specification, development and validation are
interleaved.
 Component-based software engineering
 The system is assembled from existing
components.

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Waterfall Model
Requir ements
definition

System and
software design

Implementa tion
and unit testing

Integ ration and

system testing

Oper ation and

maintenance
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Waterfall Model
 Inflexible partitioning of the project into
distinct stages
 Makes it difficult to respond to changing
customer requirements.
 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.

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Evolutionary development
 Exploratory development
 Objective is to work with customers and to evolve
a final system from an initial outline specification.
 Starts with well-understood requirements and add
new features as proposed by the customer.
 Throw-away prototyping
 Objective is to understand the system
requirements.
 Starts with poorly understood requirements to
clarify what is really needed.

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 Evolutionary Development
Concurr ent
activities

Initial
Specification version

Outline Intermedia te
Development versions
description

Final
Valida tion version

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Evolutionary Development
 Problems
 Lack of process visibility;
 Systems are often poorly structured;
 Special skills (e.g. in languages for rapid
prototyping) may be required.
 Applicability
 For small or medium-size interactive systems;
 For parts of large systems (e.g. the user interface);
 For short-lifetime systems.

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 Component Based System
Engineering
 Systematic reuse where systems are
integrated from existing components or
COTS (Commercial-off-the-shelf)
systems.

This approach is becoming increasingly used

as component standards have emerged.

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Component Based System
Engineering

Requirements Component Requirements System design

specification analysis modification with reuse

Development System
and integ ration validation

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Process Iterations
 System requirements ALWAYS evolve in the
course of a project
 Process iteration where earlier stages are
reworked is always part of the process for large
systems.
 Iteration can be applied to any of the generic
process models.
 Two (related) approaches
 Incremental delivery;
 Spiral development.

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Incremental Delivery
 Rather than deliver the system as a single
delivery,
 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.
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 Incremental Delivery
Define outline Assign requirements Design system
requirements to increments architectur e

Develop system Valida te Integrate Validate

increment increment increment system
Final
system
System incomplete

Requirements are frozen though requirements

for later increments can continue to evolve.
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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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Spiral Development
 Process is represented as a spiral
rather than as a sequence of activities
with backtracking.
 Each loop in the spiral represents a
phase in the process.
 No fixed phases such as specification
or design - loops in the spiral are
chosen depending on what is required.

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Spiral Development Model
Deter mine objecti ves,
Evalua te alterna tives,
alterna tives and
constr aints
(1) Development & Validation Risk
anal ysis
identify, resolv e risks

(2) Plan next phase!!!!! Risk

anal ysis
Risk
Oper a-
anal ysis
Prototype 3 tional
Prototype 2 protoype
Risk
REVIEW anal ysis Proto-
type 1
Requir ements plan Simula tions , models , benchmar ks
Life-cy cle plan Concept of
Oper a tion S/W
requir ements Product
design Detailed

Risks are explicitly assessed

De velopment
plan
Requir ement
valida tion Code
design

and resolved throughout the process.

Integ ra tion Design
V&V
Unit test
Integ ra tion
and test plan
Plan ne xt phase test
Acceptance
Service test De velop , verify
ne xt-le vel pr oduct

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Key Points
 Software processes are the activities involved in
producing and evolving a software system.
 General activities are specification, design and
implementation, validation and evolution.
 Generic process models describe the organisation
of software processes. For example
 waterfall model,
 evolutionary development; and
 component-based software engineering.
 Iterative process models describe the software
process as a cycle of activities.

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