Advanced Software Engineering

Week 3
Software Processes

D.M.K.D.Dissanayake

MSc-IT(Cyber security), PGDIT, BSc(Hons),HR(Dip)

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SOFTWARE PROCESS

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 The software process
• A structured set of activities required develop a
to software system.

• Many different software processes but all involve:

o Specification – defining what the system should do;
o Design and implementation – defining the organization of
the system and implementing the system;
o Validation – checking that it does what the customer wants;
o 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:

o Products, which are the outcomes of a process
activity;
o Roles, which reflect the responsibilities of the
people involved in the process;
o 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.
• Reuse-oriented software engineering
The system is assembled from existing
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:
o Requirements analysis and definition
o System and software design
o Implementation and unit testing
o Integration and system testing
o 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
• Incremental development is based on the idea of
developing an initial implementation, exposing this to
user feedback, and evolving it through several versions
until an acceptable system has been developed.

• The activities a process are not separated but

of
interleaved with feedback involved across those
activities.

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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 work done

during development than when the system is fully
developed, tested, and delivered.
Customers can comment on demonstrations of the
software and see how much has been implemented.

• More rapid delivery useful software is possible even if

all the functionality hasn’t been included.
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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 Reuse-oriented software engineering
• Based on systematic reuse where systems
integrated
are from existing components or
(Commercial-off-the-shelf) systems. COTS

• Process stages
▪Component analysis;
▪Requirements modification;
▪System design with reuse;
▪Development and integration.

• Reuse is now the standard approach for building many

types of business system

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Reuse-oriented software engineering

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PROCESS ACTIVITIES

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 Process activities
• 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
oFeasibility study
Is it technically and financially feasible to build the system?

oRequirements elicitation and analysis

What do the system stakeholders require or expect from the system?

oRequirements specification
Defining the requirements in detail

oRequirements validation
Checking the validity of the requirements

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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;

• 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
(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
• 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
Development or 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.

Acceptance 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

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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 demarcation

between
a development and evolution
increasingly
(maintenance)irrelevant as fewer
this andis fewer systems are
completely new.

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System evolution

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 Key points
• Software processes are the involved in
activities 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 include the

models ‘waterfall’ model, development, and
reuse-oriented development.
incremental

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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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COPING WITH CHANGE

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 Coping with change
• Change is inevitable in all large software projects.
oBusiness changes lead to new and
changed system requirements
oNew technologies open up new possibilities for improving
implementations
oChanging platforms require application changes

• 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 avoidance, where the software process includes
activities that can anticipate possible changes before
significant rework is required.
o 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.
o 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. 35
 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:
• Therequirements 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
oPrototype should focus on areas of the product that are
not well-understood;
oError checking and recovery may not be included in the
prototype;
oFocus 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:
o It may be impossible to tune the system to
meet non-functional requirements;
o Prototypes are normally undocumented;
o The prototype structure is usually degraded
through rapid change;
o 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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 Boehm’s spiral model
• 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.
• Risks are explicitly assessed and resolved
throughout the process.

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Boehm’s spiral model of the software
process

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 Spiral model sectors
Objective setting
Specific objectives for the phase are identified.
Risk assessment and reduction
Risks are assessed and activities put in place to reduce the
key risks.
Development and validation
A development model for the system is chosen which
can be any of the generic models.
Planning
The project is reviewed and the next phase of the spiral is
planned.

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 Spiral model usage
• Spiral model has been very influential in helping people
think about iteration in software processes and
introducing the risk-driven approach to development.

• In practice, however, the model is rarely used as

published for practical software development.

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THE RATIONAL UNIFIED PROCESS

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 The Rational Unified Process
• A modern generic process derived from the work on the
UML and associated process.
• Brings together aspects of the 3 generic process models
discussed previously.
• Normally described from 3 perspectives
o A dynamic perspective that shows phases over time;
o A static perspective that shows process activities;
o A proactive perspective that suggests good practice.

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Phases in the Rational Unified Process

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 RUP phases
Inception
Establish the business case for the system.
Elaboration
Develop an understanding of the problem domain and the
system architecture.
Construction
System design, programming and testing.
Transition
Deploy the system in its operating environment.

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 Static workflows in the Rational Unified
Process
Workflow Description
Business modelling The business processes are modelled
using business use cases.
Requirements Actors who interact with the system are
identified and use cases are developed to model
the system requirements.
Analysis and design A design model is created and documented
using architectural 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.
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 Static workflows in the Rational Unified
Process
Workflow Description
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.
Configuration and This supporting workflow managed changes
to change the system (see Chapter 25).
management
Project This supporting workflow manages the
management system development (see Chapters 22 and 23).
Environment This workflow is concerned with making
appropriate software tools available to the
software development team.
 RUP good practice
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.

Use component-based architectures

Organize the system architecture as a set of
reusable components.

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 RUP good practice
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.

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