Module 1 – Coping with change & Software process

activities

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Coping with change

² 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
² 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

² 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.
² 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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Process activities

² 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.
² 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

² The process of establishing what services are required

and the constraints on the system’s operation and
development.
² 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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Software design and implementation

² The process of converting the system specification into

an executable system.
² Software design
§ Design a software structure that realises the specification;
² Implementation
§ Translate this structure into an executable program;
² The activities of design and implementation are closely
related and may be inter-leaved.

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Traditional Design Approach

²Consists of two activities:

§ Structured analysis
§ Structured design

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Structured Analysis Activity

² Identify all the functions to be performed.

² Identify data flow among the functions.
² Decompose each function recursively into sub-
functions.
§ Identify data flow among the subfunctions as well.

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Structured Analysis (CONT.)

²Carried out using Data flow diagrams

(DFDs).
²After structured analysis, carry out
structured design:
§ architectural design (or high-level design)
§ detailed design (or low-level design).

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Structured Design

² High-level design:
§ decompose the system into modules,
§ represent invocation relationships among the modules.
² Detailed design:
§ different modules designed in greater detail:
• data structures and algorithms for each module are designed.

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Object Oriented Design
² First identify various objects (real world entities)
occurring in the problem:
§ identify the relationships among the objects.
§ For example, the objects in a pay-roll software may be:
• employees,
• managers,
• pay-roll register,
• Departments, etc.

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Object Oriented Design (CONT.)
²Object structure
§ further refined to obtain the detailed design.
²OOD has several advantages:
§ lower development effort,
§ lower development time,
§ better maintainability.

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A general model of the design process

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Design activities

² 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.
² Interface design, where you define the interfaces
between system components.
² Component design, where you take each system
component and design how it will operate.
² Database design, where you design the system data
structures and how these are to be represented in a
database.
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Implementation

²Purpose of implementation phase

(aka coding and unit testing phase):
§ translate software design into source
code.

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Implementation

²During the implementation phase:

§ each module of the design is coded,
§ each module is unit tested
• tested independently as a stand alone unit,
and debugged,
§ each module is documented.

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Implementation (CONT.)

²The purpose of unit testing:

§ test if individual modules work correctly.
²The end product of implementation
phase:
§ a set of program modules that have been
tested individually.

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Software validation

² Verification and validation (V & V) is intended to show

that a system conforms to its specification and meets the
requirements of the system customer.
² Involves checking and review processes and system
testing.
² 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.
² Testing is the most commonly used V & V activity.

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Stages of testing

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Testing stages

² Development or component testing

§ Individual components are tested independently;
§ Components may be functions or objects or coherent groupings
of these entities.
² System testing
§ Testing of the system as a whole. Testing of emergent properties
is particularly important.
² 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 maintenance

² Software is inherently flexible and can change.

² As requirements change through changing business
circumstances, the software that supports the business
must also evolve and change.
² Although there has been a demarcation between
development and evolution (maintenance) this is
increasingly irrelevant as fewer and fewer systems are
completely new.

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Key points

² Processes should include activities to cope with change.

This may involve a prototyping phase that helps avoid
poor decisions on requirements and design.
² Processes may be structured for iterative development
and delivery so that changes may be made without
disrupting the system as a whole.
² 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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