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Software Development Processes

Terms in this set (81)

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.
Typical development processes activities
• Requirements engineering
• System analysis
• High-level
design/architecture
• Low-level design
• Coding
• Integration
• Design and code reviews
• Testing
• Maintenance
• Projectmanagement
• Configuration management
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.
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.
Life cycle models
• Combine the development processes and activities in different ways (different order, once or repeated ...) to model the life cycle of a project
• By making models of the life cycle of successful software projects can help us design better approaches to plan the life cycle of future projects
• There are several 'generic' life cycle models that are often used or used as a basis for design of custom life cycle models
Generic software process models
The waterfall model
- Plan-driven model. Separate and distinct phases of specification and development.
Incremental development (Evolutionary development)
- Specification, development and validation are interleaved. May be plan-driven or agile.
Reuse-oriented software engineering (Component-based software engineering)
- The system is assembled from existing components.
There are many variants of these models e.g. formal development where a waterfall-like process is used but the specification is a formal specification that is refined through several stages to an implementable design.
Identifying a Task Set
• A task set defines the actual work to be done to accomplish the objectives of a software engineering action.
- A list of the task to be accomplished
- A list of the work products to be produced
- A list of the quality assurance filters to be applied
A process pattern
- describes a process-related problem that is encountered
during software engineering work,
- identifies the environment in which the problem has been encountered, and
- suggests one or more proven solutions to the problem.
• Stated in more general terms, a process pattern provides you with a consistent method for describing problem solutions within the context of the software process.
Process Pattern Types
• Stage patterns
• Task patterns
• Phase patterns
Stage patterns
defines a problem associated with a framework activity for the process.
Task patterns
defines a problem associated with a software engineering action or work task and relevant to successful software engineering practice
Phase patterns
define the sequence of framework activities that occur with the process, even when the overall flow of activities is iterative in nature.
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.
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
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.
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