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Presentation: PPSC Lecturer Computer Science Software Engineering Notes

Presentation · September 2020

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.18211.89123

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 Compiled by Dr. Ghulam Gilanie Janjua
Overview of SE, the Software Processes, Generic Process Models: Framework Activity, Task Set,
Process Patterns, Process Improvement, CMM Prescriptive, Process Models: Waterfall Model,
Incremental Process Model, Evolutionary Process Model; SpecializedProcess Models: Component
Based Development, the Formal Methods Models, Agile Development; Business Information
Systems: Components, Types, and Evaluating methods. SDLC: Phases, System Planning,
Preliminary Investigation, SWOT Analysis. The Importance of Strategic Planning; Evaluation of
Systems Requests, Requirements Engineering. Difference between Structured Analysis and Object
Oriented Analysis, Difference between FDD Diagrams & UML Diagrams; Data & Process
Modelling; Diagrams: Data Flow, Context, Conventions, Detailed Level DFD’s; Levelling and
Balancing. Logical Versus Physical Models. The Design Process; Architecture Design Elements,
Interface Design Elements, Component-Level Design Elements, Deployments Design Elements;
System Architecture, Architectural Styles. User Interface Design. WebApps Interface Design;
Software Quality Assurance. Validation Testing, System Testing; Internal and External View of
Testing.
Software is more than just a program code. A program is an executable code, which
serves some computational purpose. Software is considered to be collection of
executable programming code, associated libraries and documentations. Software,
when made for a specific requirement is called software product.
Engineering on the other hand, is all about developing products, using well-defined,
scientific principles and methods.

Software engineering is an engineering branch associated with development of

software product using well-defined scientific principles, methods and procedures. The
outcome of software engineering is an efficient and reliable software product.

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Software Evolution
The process of developing a software product using software engineering principles and
methods is referred to as software evolution. This includes the initial development of
software and its maintenance and updates, till desired software product is developed,
which satisfies the expected requirements.

Evolution starts from the requirement gathering process. After which developers create
a prototype of the intended software and show it to the users to get their feedback at the
early stage of software product development. The users suggest changes, on which
several consecutive updates and maintenance keep on changing too. This process
changes to the original software, till the desired software is accomplished.
Even after the user has desired software in hand, the advancing technology and the
changing requirements force the software product to change accordingly. Re-creating
software from scratch and to go one-on-one with requirement is not feasible. The only
feasible and economical solution is to update the existing software so that it matches the
latest requirements.

Software Evolution Laws

Lehman has given laws for software evolution. He divided the software into three
different categories:

 S-type (static-type) - This is a software, which works strictly according to

defined specifications and solutions. The solution and the method to achieve it,
both are immediately understood before coding. The s-type software is least
subjected to changes hence this is the simplest of all. For example, calculator
program for mathematical computation.
 P-type (practical-type) - This is a software with a collection of procedures. This
is defined by exactly what procedures can do. In this software, the specifications
can be described but the solution is not obvious instantly. For example, gaming
software.

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 E-type (embedded-type) - This software works closely as the requirement of
real-world environment. This software has a high degree of evolution as there are
various changes in laws, taxes etc. in the real world situations. For example,
Online trading software.

E-Type software evolution

Lehman has given eight laws for E-Type software evolution -

 Continuing change - An E-type software system must continue to adapt to the

real world changes, else it becomes progressively less useful.
 Increasing complexity - As an E-type software system evolves, its complexity
tends to increase unless work is done to maintain or reduce it.
 Conservation of familiarity - The familiarity with the software or the knowledge
about how it was developed, why was it developed in that particular manner etc.
must be retained at any cost, to implement the changes in the system.
 Continuing growth- In order for an E-type system intended to resolve some
business problem, its size of implementing the changes grows according to the
lifestyle changes of the business.
 Reducing quality - An E-type software system declines in quality unless
rigorously maintained and adapted to a changing operational environment.
 Feedback systems- The E-type software systems constitute multi-loop, multi-
level feedback systems and must be treated as such to be successfully modified
or improved.
 Self-regulation - E-type system evolution processes are self-regulating with the
distribution of product and process measures close to normal.
 Organizational stability - The average effective global activity rate in an
evolving E-type system is invariant over the lifetime of the product.

Software Paradigms
Software paradigms refer to the methods and steps, which are taken while designing the
software. There are many methods proposed and are in work today, but we need to see
where in the software engineering these paradigms stand. These can be combined into
various categories, though each of them is contained in one another:

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Programming paradigm is a subset of Software design paradigm which is further a

subset of Software development paradigm.

Software Development Paradigm

This Paradigm is known as software engineering paradigms where all the engineering
concepts pertaining to the development of software are applied. It includes various
researches and requirement gathering which helps the software product to build. It
consists of –

 Requirement gathering
 Software design
 Programming

Software Design Paradigm

This paradigm is a part of Software Development and includes –

 Design
 Maintenance
 Programming

Programming Paradigm

This paradigm is related closely to programming aspect of software development. This

includes –

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 Coding
 Testing
 Integration

Need of Software Engineering

The need of software engineering arises because of higher rate of change in user
requirements and environment on which the software is working.

 Large software - It is easier to build a wall than to a house or building, likewise,

as the size of software become large engineering has to step to give it a scientific
process.
 Scalability- If the software process were not based on scientific and engineering
concepts, it would be easier to re-create new software than to scale an existing
one.
 Cost- As hardware industry has shown its skills and huge manufacturing has
lower down he price of computer and electronic hardware. But the cost of
software remains high if proper process is not adapted.
 Dynamic Nature- The always growing and adapting nature of software hugely
depends upon the environment in which user works. If the nature of software is
always changing, new enhancements need to be done in the existing one. This is
where software engineering plays a good role.
 Quality Management- Better process of software development provides better
and quality software product.

Characteristics of good software

A software product can be judged by what it offers and how well it can be used. This
software must satisfy on the following grounds:

 Operational
 Transitional
 Maintenance
Well-engineered and crafted software is expected to have the following characteristics:

Operational

This tells us how well software works in operations. It can be measured on:

 Budget
 Usability
 Efficiency

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 Correctness
 Functionality
 Dependability
 Security
 Safety

Transitional

This aspect is important when the software is moved from one platform to another:

 Portability
 Interoperability
 Reusability
 Adaptability

Maintenance

This aspect briefs about how well a software has the capabilities to maintain itself in the
ever-changing environment:

 Modularity
 Maintainability
 Flexibility
 Scalability
In short, Software engineering is a branch of computer science, which uses well-defined
engineering concepts required to produce efficient, durable, scalable, in-budget and on-
time software products.

Software Development Life Cycle

Communication

This is the first step where the user initiates the request for a desired software product.
He contacts the service provider and tries to negotiate the terms. He submits his request
to the service providing organization in writing.

Requirement Gathering

This step onwards the software development team works to carry on the project. The
team holds discussions with various stakeholders from problem domain and tries to bring
out as much information as possible on their requirements. The requirements are
contemplated and segregated into user requirements, system requirements and

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functional requirements. The requirements are collected using a number of practices as
given -

 studying the existing or obsolete system and software,

 conducting interviews of users and developers,
 referring to the database or
 collecting answers from the questionnaires.

Feasibility Study

After requirement gathering, the team comes up with a rough plan of software process.
At this step the team analyzes if a software can be made to fulfill all requirements of the
user and if there is any possibility of software being no more useful. It is found out, if the
project is financially, practically and technologically feasible for the organization to take
up. There are many algorithms available, which help the developers to conclude the
feasibility of a software project.

System Analysis

At this step the developers decide a roadmap of their plan and try to bring up the best
software model suitable for the project. System analysis includes Understanding of
software product limitations, learning system related problems or changes to be done in
existing systems beforehand, identifying and addressing the impact of project on
organization and personnel etc. The project team analyzes the scope of the project and
plans the schedule and resources accordingly.

Software Design

Next step is to bring down whole knowledge of requirements and analysis on the desk
and design the software product. The inputs from users and information gathered in
requirement gathering phase are the inputs of this step. The output of this step comes in
the form of two designs; logical design and physical design. Engineers produce meta-
data and data dictionaries, logical diagrams, data-flow diagrams and in some cases
pseudo codes.

Coding

This step is also known as programming phase. The implementation of software design
starts in terms of writing program code in the suitable programming language and
developing error-free executable programs efficiently.

Testing

An estimate says that 50% of whole software development process should be tested.
Errors may ruin the software from critical level to its own removal. Software testing is

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done while coding by the developers and thorough testing is conducted by testing
experts at various levels of code such as module testing, program testing, product
testing, in-house testing and testing the product at user’s end. Early discovery of errors
and their remedy is the key to reliable software.

Integration

Software may need to be integrated with the libraries, databases and other program(s).
This stage of SDLC is involved in the integration of software with outer world entities.

Implementation

This means installing the software on user machines. At times, software needs post-
installation configurations at user end. Software is tested for portability and adaptability
and integration related issues are solved during implementation.

Operation and Maintenance

This phase confirms the software operation in terms of more efficiency and less errors.
If required, the users are trained on, or aided with the documentation on how to operate
the software and how to keep the software operational. The software is maintained timely
by updating the code according to the changes taking place in user end environment or
technology. This phase may face challenges from hidden bugs and real-world
unidentified problems.

Disposition

As time elapses, the software may decline on the performance front. It may go
completely obsolete or may need intense upgradation. Hence a pressing need to
eliminate a major portion of the system arises. This phase includes archiving data and
required software components, closing down the system, planning disposition activity
and terminating system at appropriate end-of-system time.

Software Project Management

The job pattern of an IT company engaged in software development can be seen split in
two parts:

 Software Creation
 Software Project Management
A project is well-defined task, which is a collection of several operations done in order to
achieve a goal (for example, software development and delivery). A Project can be
characterized as:

 Every project may has a unique and distinct goal.

 Project is not routine activity or day-to-day operations.

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 Project comes with a start time and end time.
 Project ends when its goal is achieved hence it is a temporary phase in the
lifetime of an organization.
 Project needs adequate resources in terms of time, manpower, finance, material
and knowledge-bank.

Software Project
A Software Project is the complete procedure of software development from requirement
gathering to testing and maintenance, carried out according to the execution
methodologies, in a specified period to achieve intended software product.

Need of software project management

Software is said to be an intangible product. Software development is a kind of all new
stream in world business and there’s very little experience in building software products.
Most software products are tailor made to fit client’s requirements. The most important
is that the underlying technology changes and advances so frequently and rapidly that
experience of one product may not be applied to the other one. All such business and
environmental constraints bring risk in software development hence it is essential to
manage software projects efficiently.

The image above shows triple constraints for software projects. It is an essential part of
software organization to deliver quality product, keeping the cost within client’s budget
constrain and deliver the project as per scheduled. There are several factors, both
internal and external, which may impact this triple constrain triangle. Any of three factor
can severely impact the other two.
Therefore, software project management is essential to incorporate user requirements
along with budget and time constraints.

Software Project Manager

A software project manager is a person who undertakes the responsibility of executing
the software project. Software project manager is thoroughly aware of all the phases of

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SDLC that the software would go through. Project manager may never directly involve
in producing the end product but he controls and manages the activities involved in
production.
A project manager closely monitors the development process, prepares and executes
various plans, arranges necessary and adequate resources, maintains communication
among all team members in order to address issues of cost, budget, resources, time,
quality and customer satisfaction.
Let us see few responsibilities that a project manager shoulders -

Managing People

 Act as project leader

 Liaison with stakeholders
 Managing human resources
 Setting up reporting hierarchy etc.

Managing Project

 Defining and setting up project scope

 Managing project management activities
 Monitoring progress and performance
 Risk analysis at every phase
 Take necessary step to avoid or come out of problems
 Act as project spokesperson

Software Management Activities

Software project management comprises of a number of activities, which contains
planning of project, deciding scope of software product, estimation of cost in various
terms, scheduling of tasks and events, and resource management. Project management
activities may include:

 Project Planning
 Scope Management
 Project Estimation

Project Planning
Software project planning is task, which is performed before the production of software
actually starts. It is there for the software production but involves no concrete activity that
has any direction connection with software production; rather it is a set of multiple

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processes, which facilitates software production. Project planning may include the
following:

Scope Management
It defines the scope of project; this includes all the activities, process need to be done in
order to make a deliverable software product. Scope management is essential because
it creates boundaries of the project by clearly defining what would be done in the project
and what would not be done. This makes project to contain limited and quantifiable tasks,
which can easily be documented and in turn avoids cost and time overrun.
During Project Scope management, it is necessary to -

 Define the scope

 Decide its verification and control
 Divide the project into various smaller parts for ease of management.
 Verify the scope
 Control the scope by incorporating changes to the scope

Project Estimation
For an effective management accurate estimation of various measures is a must. With
correct estimation managers can manage and control the project more efficiently and
effectively.
Project estimation may involve the following:

 Software size estimation

Software size may be estimated either in terms of KLOC (Kilo Line of Code) or by
calculating number of function points in the software. Lines of code depend upon
coding practices and Function points vary according to the user or software
requirement.

 Effort estimation
The managers estimate efforts in terms of personnel requirement and man-hour
required to produce the software. For effort estimation software size should be
known. This can either be derived by managers’ experience, organization’s
historical data or software size can be converted into efforts by using some
standard formulae.

 Time estimation
Once size and efforts are estimated, the time required to produce the software
can be estimated. Efforts required is segregated into sub categories as per the
requirement specifications and interdependency of various components of
software. Software tasks are divided into smaller tasks, activities or events by

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Work Breakthrough Structure (WBS). The tasks are scheduled on day-to-day
basis or in calendar months.
The sum of time required to complete all tasks in hours or days is the total time
invested to complete the project.

 Cost estimation
This might be considered as the most difficult of all because it depends on more
elements than any of the previous ones. For estimating project cost, it is required
to consider -

o Size of software
o Software quality
o Hardware
o Additional software or tools, licenses etc.
o Skilled personnel with task-specific skills
o Travel involved
o Communication
o Training and support

Project Estimation Techniques

We discussed various parameters involving project estimation such as size, effort, time
and cost.
Project manager can estimate the listed factors using two broadly recognized techniques
–

Decomposition Technique

This technique assumes the software as a product of various compositions.

There are two main models -

 Line of Code Estimation is done on behalf of number of line of codes in the

software product.
 Function Points Estimation is done on behalf of number of function points in the
software product.

Empirical Estimation Technique

This technique uses empirically derived formulae to make estimation. These formulae
are based on LOC or FPs.

 Putnam Model

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This model is made by Lawrence H. Putnam, which is based on Norden’s
frequency distribution (Rayleigh curve). Putnam model maps time and efforts
required with software size.

 COCOMO
COCOMO stands for COnstructive COst MOdel, developed by Barry W. Boehm.
It divides the software product into three categories of software: organic, semi-
detached and embedded.

Project Scheduling
Project Scheduling in a project refers to roadmap of all activities to be done with specified
order and within time slot allotted to each activity. Project managers tend to define
various tasks, and project milestones and arrange them keeping various factors in mind.
They look for tasks lie in critical path in the schedule, which are necessary to complete
in specific manner (because of task interdependency) and strictly within the time
allocated. Arrangement of tasks which lies out of critical path are less likely to impact
over all schedule of the project.
For scheduling a project, it is necessary to -

 Break down the project tasks into smaller, manageable form

 Find out various tasks and correlate them
 Estimate time frame required for each task
 Divide time into work-units
 Assign adequate number of work-units for each task
 Calculate total time required for the project from start to finish

Resource management
All elements used to develop a software product may be assumed as resource for that
project. This may include human resource, productive tools and software libraries.
The resources are available in limited quantity and stay in the organization as a pool of
assets. The shortage of resources hampers the development of project and it can lag
behind the schedule. Allocating extra resources increases development cost in the end.
It is therefore necessary to estimate and allocate adequate resources for the project.
Resource management includes -

 Defining proper organization project by creating a project team and allocating

responsibilities to each team member
 Determining resources required at a particular stage and their availability
 Manage Resources by generating resource request when they are required and
de-allocating them when they are no more needed.

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Project Risk Management
Risk management involves all activities pertaining to identification, analyzing and making
provision for predictable and non-predictable risks in the project. Risk may include the
following:

 Experienced staff leaving the project and new staff coming in.
 Change in organizational management.
 Requirement change or misinterpreting requirement.
 Under-estimation of required time and resources.
 Technological changes, environmental changes, business competition.

Risk Management Process

There are following activities involved in risk management process:

 Identification - Make note of all possible risks, which may occur in the project.
 Categorize - Categorize known risks into high, medium and low risk intensity as
per their possible impact on the project.
 Manage - Analyze the probability of occurrence of risks at various phases. Make
plan to avoid or face risks. Attempt to minimize their side-effects.
 Monitor - Closely monitor the potential risks and their early symptoms. Also
monitor the effects of steps taken to mitigate or avoid them.

Project Execution & Monitoring

In this phase, the tasks described in project plans are executed according to their
schedules.
Execution needs monitoring in order to check whether everything is going according to
the plan. Monitoring is observing to check the probability of risk and taking measures to
address the risk or report the status of various tasks.
These measures include -

 Activity Monitoring - All activities scheduled within some task can be monitored
on day-to-day basis. When all activities in a task are completed, it is considered
as complete.
 Status Reports - The reports contain status of activities and tasks completed
within a given time frame, generally a week. Status can be marked as finished,
pending or work-in-progress etc.
 Milestones Checklist - Every project is divided into multiple phases where major
tasks are performed (milestones) based on the phases of SDLC. This milestone
checklist is prepared once every few weeks and reports the status of milestones.

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Project Communication Management
Effective communication plays vital role in the success of a project. It bridges gaps
between client and the organization, among the team members as well as other stake
holders in the project such as hardware suppliers.
Communication can be oral or written. Communication management process may have
the following steps:

 Planning - This step includes the identifications of all the stakeholders in the
project and the mode of communication among them. It also considers if any
additional communication facilities are required.
 Sharing - After determining various aspects of planning, manager focuses on
sharing correct information with the correct person on correct time. This keeps
every one involved the project up to date with project progress and its status.
 Feedback - Project managers use various measures and feedback mechanism
and create status and performance reports. This mechanism ensures that input
from various stakeholders is coming to the project manager as their feedback.
 Closure - At the end of each major event, end of a phase of SDLC or end of the
project itself, administrative closure is formally announced to update every
stakeholder by sending email, by distributing a hardcopy of document or by other
mean of effective communication.
After closure, the team moves to next phase or project.

Configuration Management
Configuration management is a process of tracking and controlling the changes in
software in terms of the requirements, design, functions and development of the product.
IEEE defines it as “the process of identifying and defining the items in the system,
controlling the change of these items throughout their life cycle, recording and reporting
the status of items and change requests, and verifying the completeness and
correctness of items”.
Generally, once the SRS is finalized there is less chance of requirement of changes from
user. If they occur, the changes are addressed only with prior approval of higher
management, as there is a possibility of cost and time overrun.

Baseline

A phase of SDLC is assumed over if it baselined, i.e. baseline is a measurement that

defines completeness of a phase. A phase is baselined when all activities pertaining to
it are finished and well documented. If it was not the final phase, its output would be used
in next immediate phase.

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Configuration management is a discipline of organization administration, which takes
care of occurrence of any change (process, requirement, technological, strategical etc.)
after a phase is baselined. CM keeps check on any changes done in software.

Change Control

Change control is function of configuration management, which ensures that all changes
made to software system are consistent and made as per organizational rules and
regulations.
A change in the configuration of product goes through following steps -
 Identification - A change request arrives from either internal or external source.
When change request is identified formally, it is properly documented.
 Validation - Validity of the change request is checked and its handling procedure
is confirmed.
 Analysis - The impact of change request is analyzed in terms of schedule, cost
and required efforts. Overall impact of the prospective change on system is
analyzed.
 Control - If the prospective change either impacts too many entities in the system
or it is unavoidable, it is mandatory to take approval of high authorities before
change is incorporated into the system. It is decided if the change is worth
incorporation or not. If it is not, change request is refused formally.
 Execution - If the previous phase determines to execute the change request, this
phase take appropriate actions to execute the change, does a thorough revision
if necessary.
 Close request - The change is verified for correct implementation and merging
with the rest of the system. This newly incorporated change in the software is
documented properly and the request is formally is closed.

Project Management Tools

The risk and uncertainty rises multifold with respect to the size of the project, even when
the project is developed according to set methodologies.
There are tools available, which aid for effective project management. A few are
described -

Gantt Chart

Gantt charts was devised by Henry Gantt (1917). It represents project schedule with
respect to time periods. It is a horizontal bar chart with bars representing activities and
time scheduled for the project activities.

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PERT Chart

PERT (Program Evaluation & Review Technique) chart is a tool that depicts project as
network diagram. It is capable of graphically representing main events of project in both
parallel and consecutive way. Events, which occur one after another, show dependency
of the later event over the previous one.

Events are shown as numbered nodes. They are connected by labeled arrows depicting
sequence of tasks in the project.

Resource Histogram

This is a graphical tool that contains bar or chart representing number of resources
(usually skilled staff) required over time for a project event (or phase). Resource
Histogram is an effective tool for staff planning and coordination.

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Critical Path Analysis

This tool is useful in recognizing interdependent tasks in the project. It also helps to find
out the shortest path or critical path to complete the project successfully. Like PERT
diagram, each event is allotted a specific period. This tool shows dependency of event
assuming an event can proceed to next only if the previous one is completed.
The events are arranged according to their earliest possible start time. Path between
start and end node is critical path which cannot be further reduced and all events require
to be executed in same order.

Software Requirements
The software requirements are description of features and functionalities of the target
system. Requirements convey the expectations of users from the software product. The
requirements can be obvious or hidden, known or unknown, expected or unexpected
from client’s point of view.

Requirement Engineering

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The process to gather the software requirements from client, analyze and document
them is known as requirement engineering.
The goal of requirement engineering is to develop and maintain sophisticated and
descriptive ‘System Requirements Specification’ document.

Requirement Engineering Process

It is a four step process, which includes –

 Feasibility Study
 Requirement Gathering
 Software Requirement Specification
 Software Requirement Validation
Let us see the process briefly -

Feasibility study

When the client approaches the organization for getting the desired product developed,
it comes up with rough idea about what all functions the software must perform and which
all features are expected from the software.
Referencing to this information, the analysts does a detailed study about whether the
desired system and its functionality are feasible to develop.
This feasibility study is focused towards goal of the organization. This study analyzes
whether the software product can be practically materialized in terms of implementation,
contribution of project to organization, cost constraints and as per values and objectives
of the organization. It explores technical aspects of the project and product such as
usability, maintainability, productivity and integration ability.
The output of this phase should be a feasibility study report that should contain adequate
comments and recommendations for management about whether or not the project
should be undertaken.

Requirement Gathering

If the feasibility report is positive towards undertaking the project, next phase starts with
gathering requirements from the user. Analysts and engineers communicate with the
client and end-users to know their ideas on what the software should provide and which
features they want the software to include.

Software Requirement Specification

SRS is a document created by system analyst after the requirements are collected from
various stakeholders.

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SRS defines how the intended software will interact with hardware, external interfaces,
speed of operation, response time of system, portability of software across various
platforms, maintainability, speed of recovery after crashing, Security, Quality, Limitations
etc.
The requirements received from client are written in natural language. It is the
responsibility of system analyst to document the requirements in technical language so
that they can be comprehended and useful by the software development team.
SRS should come up with following features:

 User Requirements are expressed in natural language.

 Technical requirements are expressed in structured language, which is used
inside the organization.
 Design description should be written in Pseudo code.
 Format of Forms and GUI screen prints.
 Conditional and mathematical notations for DFDs etc.

Software Requirement Validation

After requirement specifications are developed, the requirements mentioned in this

document are validated. User might ask for illegal, impractical solution or experts may
interpret the requirements incorrectly. This results in huge increase in cost if not nipped
in the bud. Requirements can be checked against following conditions -

 If they can be practically implemented

 If they are valid and as per functionality and domain of software
 If there are any ambiguities
 If they are complete
 If they can be demonstrated

Requirement Elicitation Process

Requirement elicitation process can be depicted using the folloiwng diagram:

 Requirements gathering - The developers discuss with the client and end users
and know their expectations from the software.
 Organizing Requirements - The developers prioritize and arrange the
requirements in order of importance, urgency and convenience.
 Negotiation & discussion - If requirements are ambiguous or there are some
conflicts in requirements of various stakeholders, if they are, it is then negotiated

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and discussed with stakeholders. Requirements may then be prioritized and
reasonably compromised.
The requirements come from various stakeholders. To remove the ambiguity and
conflicts, they are discussed for clarity and correctness. Unrealistic requirements
are compromised reasonably.

 Documentation - All formal & informal, functional and non-functional

requirements are documented and made available for next phase processing.

Requirement Elicitation Techniques

Requirements Elicitation is the process to find out the requirements for an intended
software system by communicating with client, end users, system users and others who
have a stake in the software system development.
There are various ways to discover requirements

Interviews

Interviews are strong medium to collect requirements. Organization may conduct several
types of interviews such as:

 Structured (closed) interviews, where every single information to gather is

decided in advance, they follow pattern and matter of discussion firmly.
 Non-structured (open) interviews, where information to gather is not decided in
advance, more flexible and less biased.
 Oral interviews
 Written interviews
 One-to-one interviews which are held between two persons across the table.
 Group interviews which are held between groups of participants. They help to
uncover any missing requirement as numerous people are involved.

Surveys

Organization may conduct surveys among various stakeholders by querying about their
expectation and requirements from the upcoming system.

Questionnaires

A document with pre-defined set of objective questions and respective options is handed
over to all stakeholders to answer, which are collected and compiled.
A shortcoming of this technique is, if an option for some issue is not mentioned in the
questionnaire, the issue might be left unattended.

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Task analysis

Team of engineers and developers may analyze the operation for which the new system
is required. If the client already has some software to perform certain operation, it is
studied and requirements of proposed system are collected.

Domain Analysis

Every software falls into some domain category. The expert people in the domain can
be a great help to analyze general and specific requirements.

Brainstorming

An informal debate is held among various stakeholders and all their inputs are recorded
for further requirements analysis.

Prototyping

Prototyping is building user interface without adding detail functionality for user to
interpret the features of intended software product. It helps giving better idea of
requirements. If there is no software installed at client’s end for developer’s reference
and the client is not aware of its own requirements, the developer creates a prototype
based on initially mentioned requirements. The prototype is shown to the client and the
feedback is noted. The client feedback serves as an input for requirement gathering.

Observation

Team of experts visit the client’s organization or workplace. They observe the actual
working of the existing installed systems. They observe the workflow at client’s end and
how execution problems are dealt. The team itself draws some conclusions which aid to
form requirements expected from the software.

Software Requirements Characteristics

Gathering software requirements is the foundation of the entire software development
project. Hence they must be clear, correct and well-defined.
A complete Software Requirement Specifications must be:

 Clear
 Correct
 Consistent
 Coherent
 Comprehensible
 Modifiable

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 Verifiable
 Prioritized
 Unambiguous
 Traceable
 Credible source

Software Requirements
We should try to understand what sort of requirements may arise in the requirement
elicitation phase and what kinds of requirements are expected from the software system.
Broadly software requirements should be categorized in two categories:

Functional Requirements

Requirements, which are related to functional aspect of software fall into this category.
They define functions and functionality within and from the software system.

Examples -

 Search option given to user to search from various invoices.

 User should be able to mail any report to management.
 Users can be divided into groups and groups can be given separate rights.
 Should comply business rules and administrative functions.
 Software is developed keeping downward compatibility intact.

Non-Functional Requirements

Requirements, which are not related to functional aspect of software, fall into this
category. They are implicit or expected characteristics of software, which users make
assumption of.
Non-functional requirements include -

 Security
 Logging
 Storage
 Configuration
 Performance
 Cost
 Interoperability
 Flexibility

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 Disaster recovery
 Accessibility
Requirements are categorized logically as

 Must Have : Software cannot be said operational without them.

 Should have : Enhancing the functionality of software.
 Could have : Software can still properly function with these requirements.
 Wish list : These requirements do not map to any objectives of software.
While developing software, ‘Must have’ must be implemented, ‘Should have’ is a matter
of debate with stakeholders and negation, whereas ‘could have’ and ‘wish list’ can be
kept for software updates.

User Interface requirements

UI is an important part of any software or hardware or hybrid system. A software is widely
accepted if it is -

 easy to operate
 quick in response
 effectively handling operational errors
 providing simple yet consistent user interface
User acceptance majorly depends upon how user can use the software. UI is the only
way for users to perceive the system. A well performing software system must also be
equipped with attractive, clear, consistent and responsive user interface. Otherwise the
functionalities of software system can not be used in convenient way. A system is said
be good if it provides means to use it efficiently. User interface requirements are briefly
mentioned below -

 Content presentation
 Easy Navigation
 Simple interface
 Responsive
 Consistent UI elements
 Feedback mechanism
 Default settings
 Purposeful layout
 Strategical use of color and texture.
 Provide help information
 User centric approach
 Group based view settings.

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Software System Analyst
System analyst in an IT organization is a person, who analyzes the requirement of
proposed system and ensures that requirements are conceived and documented
properly & correctly. Role of an analyst starts during Software Analysis Phase of SDLC.
It is the responsibility of analyst to make sure that the developed software meets the
requirements of the client.
System Analysts have the following responsibilities:

 Analyzing and understanding requirements of intended software

 Understanding how the project will contribute in the organization objectives
 Identify sources of requirement
 Validation of requirement
 Develop and implement requirement management plan
 Documentation of business, technical, process and product requirements
 Coordination with clients to prioritize requirements and remove and ambiguity
 Finalizing acceptance criteria with client and other stakeholders

Software Metrics and Measures

Software Measures can be understood as a process of quantifying and symbolizing
various attributes and aspects of software.
Software Metrics provide measures for various aspects of software process and software
product.
Software measures are fundamental requirement of software engineering. They not only
help to control the software development process but also aid to keep quality of ultimate
product excellent.
According to Tom DeMarco, a (Software Engineer), “You cannot control what you cannot
measure.” By his saying, it is very clear how important software measures are.
Let us see some software metrics:
 Size Metrics - LOC (Lines of Code), mostly calculated in thousands of delivered
source code lines, denoted as KLOC.
Function Point Count is measure of the functionality provided by the software.
Function Point count defines the size of functional aspect of software.

 Complexity Metrics - McCabe’s Cyclomatic complexity quantifies the upper

bound of the number of independent paths in a program, which is perceived as
complexity of the program or its modules. It is represented in terms of graph
theory concepts by using control flow graph.

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 Quality Metrics - Defects, their types and causes, consequence, intensity of
severity and their implications define the quality of product.
The number of defects found in development process and number of defects
reported by the client after the product is installed or delivered at client-end, define
quality of product.

 Process Metrics - In various phases of SDLC, the methods and tools used, the
company standards and the performance of development are software process
metrics.
 Resource Metrics - Effort, time and various resources used, represents metrics
for resource measurement.

Software Design Basics

Software design is a process to transform user requirements into some suitable form,
which helps the programmer in software coding and implementation.
For assessing user requirements, an SRS (Software Requirement Specification)
document is created whereas for coding and implementation, there is a need of more
specific and detailed requirements in software terms. The output of this process can
directly be used into implementation in programming languages.
Software design is the first step in SDLC (Software Design Life Cycle), which moves the
concentration from problem domain to solution domain. It tries to specify how to fulfill the
requirements mentioned in SRS.

Software Design Levels

Software design yields three levels of results:

 Architectural Design - The architectural design is the highest abstract version of

the system. It identifies the software as a system with many components
interacting with each other. At this level, the designers get the idea of proposed
solution domain.
 High-level Design- The high-level design breaks the ‘single entity-multiple
component’ concept of architectural design into less-abstracted view of sub-
systems and modules and depicts their interaction with each other. High-level
design focuses on how the system along with all of its components can be
implemented in forms of modules. It recognizes modular structure of each sub-
system and their relation and interaction among each other.
 Detailed Design- Detailed design deals with the implementation part of what is
seen as a system and its sub-systems in the previous two designs. It is more
detailed towards modules and their implementations. It defines logical structure
of each module and their interfaces to communicate with other modules.

Modularization

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Modularization is a technique to divide a software system into multiple discrete and
independent modules, which are expected to be capable of carrying out task(s)
independently. These modules may work as basic constructs for the entire software.
Designers tend to design modules such that they can be executed and/or compiled
separately and independently.
Modular design unintentionally follows the rules of ‘divide and conquer’ problem-solving
strategy this is because there are many other benefits attached with the modular design
of a software.
Advantage of modularization:

 Smaller components are easier to maintain

 Program can be divided based on functional aspects
 Desired level of abstraction can be brought in the program
 Components with high cohesion can be re-used again
 Concurrent execution can be made possible
 Desired from security aspect

Concurrency
Back in time, all software are meant to be executed sequentially. By sequential execution
we mean that the coded instruction will be executed one after another implying only one
portion of program being activated at any given time. Say, a software has multiple
modules, then only one of all the modules can be found active at any time of execution.
In software design, concurrency is implemented by splitting the software into multiple
independent units of execution, like modules and executing them in parallel. In other
words, concurrency provides capability to the software to execute more than one part of
code in parallel to each other.
It is necessary for the programmers and designers to recognize those modules, which
can be made parallel execution.

Example

The spell check feature in word processor is a module of software, which runs along side
the word processor itself.

Coupling and Cohesion

When a software program is modularized, its tasks are divided into several modules
based on some characteristics. As we know, modules are set of instructions put together
in order to achieve some tasks. They are though, considered as single entity but may
refer to each other to work together. There are measures by which the quality of a design

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of modules and their interaction among them can be measured. These measures are
called coupling and cohesion.

Cohesion
Cohesion is a measure that defines the degree of intra-dependability within elements of
a module. The greater the cohesion, the better is the program design.
There are seven types of cohesion, namely –

 Co-incidental cohesion - It is unplanned and random cohesion, which might be

the result of breaking the program into smaller modules for the sake of
modularization. Because it is unplanned, it may serve confusion to the
programmers and is generally not-accepted.
 Logical cohesion - When logically categorized elements are put together into a
module, it is called logical cohesion.
 Temporal Cohesion - When elements of module are organized such that they
are processed at a similar point in time, it is called temporal cohesion.
 Procedural cohesion - When elements of module are grouped together, which
are executed sequentially in order to perform a task, it is called procedural
cohesion.
 Communicational cohesion - When elements of module are grouped together,
which are executed sequentially and work on same data (information), it is called
communicational cohesion.
 Sequential cohesion - When elements of module are grouped because the
output of one element serves as input to another and so on, it is called sequential
cohesion.
 Functional cohesion - It is considered to be the highest degree of cohesion,
and it is highly expected. Elements of module in functional cohesion are grouped
because they all contribute to a single well-defined function. It can also be
reused.

Coupling
Coupling is a measure that defines the level of inter-dependability among modules of a
program. It tells at what level the modules interfere and interact with each other. The
lower the coupling, the better the program.
There are five levels of coupling, namely -

 Content coupling - When a module can directly access or modify or refer to the
content of another module, it is called content level coupling.
 Common coupling- When multiple modules have read and write access to
some global data, it is called common or global coupling.

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 Control coupling- Two modules are called control-coupled if one of them
decides the function of the other module or changes its flow of execution.
 Stamp coupling- When multiple modules share common data structure and
work on different part of it, it is called stamp coupling.
 Data coupling- Data coupling is when two modules interact with each other by
means of passing data (as parameter). If a module passes data structure as
parameter, then the receiving module should use all its components.
Ideally, no coupling is considered to be the best.

Design Verification
The output of software design process is design documentation, pseudo codes, detailed
logic diagrams, process diagrams, and detailed description of all functional or non-
functional requirements.
The next phase, which is the implementation of software, depends on all outputs
mentioned above.
It is then becomes necessary to verify the output before proceeding to the next phase.
The early any mistake is detected, the better it is or it might not be detected until testing
of the product. If the outputs of design phase are in formal notation form, then their
associated tools for verification should be used otherwise a thorough design review can
be used for verification and validation.
By structured verification approach, reviewers can detect defects that might be caused
by overlooking some conditions. A good design review is important for good software
design, accuracy and quality.

Software Testing
Software Testing is evaluation of the software against requirements gathered from users
and system specifications. Testing is conducted at the phase level in software
development life cycle or at module level in program code. Software testing comprises
of Validation and Verification.

Software Validation
Validation is process of examining whether or not the software satisfies the user
requirements. It is carried out at the end of the SDLC. If the software matches
requirements for which it was made, it is validated.

 Validation ensures the product under development is as per the user

requirements.
 Validation answers the question – "Are we developing the product which
attempts all that user needs from this software ?".
 Validation emphasizes on user requirements.

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Software Verification
Verification is the process of confirming if the software is meeting the business
requirements, and is developed adhering to the proper specifications and
methodologies.

 Verification ensures the product being developed is according to design

specifications.
 Verification answers the question– "Are we developing this product by firmly
following all design specifications?”
 Verifications concentrates on the design and system specifications.
Target of the test are -
 Errors - These are actual coding mistakes made by developers. In addition, there
is a difference in output of software and desired output, is considered as an error.
 Fault - When error exists fault occurs. A fault, also known as a bug, is a result of
an error which can cause system to fail.
 Failure - failure is said to be the inability of the system to perform the desired task.
Failure occurs when fault exists in the system.

Manual Vs Automated Testing

Testing can either be done manually or using an automated testing tool:
 Manual - This testing is performed without taking help of automated testing tools.
The software tester prepares test cases for different sections and levels of the
code, executes the tests and reports the result to the manager.
Manual testing is time and resource consuming. The tester needs to confirm
whether or not right test cases are used. Major portion of testing involves manual
testing.
 Automated This testing is a testing procedure done with aid of automated testing
tools. The limitations with manual testing can be overcome using automated test
tools.
A test needs to check if a webpage can be opened in Internet Explorer. This can be
easily done with manual testing. But to check if the web-server can take the load of 1
million users, it is quite impossible to test manually.
There are software and hardware tools which helps tester in conducting load testing,
stress testing, regression testing.

Testing Approaches
Tests can be conducted based on two approaches –

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 Functionality testing
 Implementation testing
When functionality is being tested without taking the actual implementation in concern it
is known as black-box testing. The other side is known as white-box testing where not
only functionality is tested but the way it is implemented is also analyzed.
Exhaustive tests are the best-desired method for a perfect testing. Every single possible
value in the range of the input and output values is tested. It is not possible to test each
and every value in real world scenario if the range of values is large.

Black-box testing

It is carried out to test functionality of the program. It is also called ‘Behavioral’ testing.
The tester in this case, has a set of input values and respective desired results. On
providing input, if the output matches with the desired results, the program is tested ‘ok’,
and problematic otherwise.

In this testing method, the design and structure of the code are not known to the tester,
and testing engineers and end users conduct this test on the software.
Black-box testing techniques:
 Equivalence class - The input is divided into similar classes. If one element of a
class passes the test, it is assumed that all the class is passed.
 Boundary values - The input is divided into higher and lower end values. If these
values pass the test, it is assumed that all values in between may pass too.
 Cause-effect graphing - In both previous methods, only one input value at a time
is tested. Cause (input) – Effect (output) is a testing technique where
combinations of input values are tested in a systematic way.
 Pair-wise Testing - The behavior of software depends on multiple parameters. In
pairwise testing, the multiple parameters are tested pair-wise for their different
values.
 State-based testing - The system changes state on provision of input. These
systems are tested based on their states and input.

White-box testing

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It is conducted to test program and its implementation, in order to improve code efficiency
or structure. It is also known as ‘Structural’ testing.

In this testing method, the design and structure of the code are known to the tester.
Programmers of the code conduct this test on the code.
The below are some White-box testing techniques:
 Control-flow testing - The purpose of the control-flow testing to set up test cases
which covers all statements and branch conditions. The branch conditions are
tested for both being true and false, so that all statements can be covered.
 Data-flow testing - This testing technique emphasis to cover all the data variables
included in the program. It tests where the variables were declared and defined
and where they were used or changed.

Testing Levels
Testing itself may be defined at various levels of SDLC. The testing process runs parallel
to software development. Before jumping on the next stage, a stage is tested, validated
and verified.
Testing separately is done just to make sure that there are no hidden bugs or issues left
in the software. Software is tested on various levels -

Unit Testing

While coding, the programmer performs some tests on that unit of program to know if it
is error free. Testing is performed under white-box testing approach. Unit testing helps
developers decide that individual units of the program are working as per requirement
and are error free.

Integration Testing

Even if the units of software are working fine individually, there is a need to find out if the
units if integrated together would also work without errors. For example, argument
passing and data updation etc.

System Testing

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The software is compiled as product and then it is tested as a whole. This can be
accomplished using one or more of the following tests:
 Functionality testing - Tests all functionalities of the software against the
requirement.
 Performance testing - This test proves how efficient the software is. It tests the
effectiveness and average time taken by the software to do desired task.
Performance testing is done by means of load testing and stress testing where
the software is put under high user and data load under various environment
conditions.
 Security & Portability - These tests are done when the software is meant to work
on various platforms and accessed by number of persons.

Acceptance Testing

When the software is ready to hand over to the customer it has to go through last phase
of testing where it is tested for user-interaction and response. This is important because
even if the software matches all user requirements and if user does not like the way it
appears or works, it may be rejected.
 Alpha testing - The team of developer themselves perform alpha testing by using
the system as if it is being used in work environment. They try to find out how user
would react to some action in software and how the system should respond to
inputs.
 Beta testing - After the software is tested internally, it is handed over to the users
to use it under their production environment only for testing purpose. This is not
as yet the delivered product. Developers expect that users at this stage will bring
minute problems, which were skipped to attend.

Regression Testing

Whenever a software product is updated with new code, feature or functionality, it is

tested thoroughly to detect if there is any negative impact of the added code. This is
known as regression testing.

Testing Documentation
Testing documents are prepared at different stages -

Before Testing

Testing starts with test cases generation. Following documents are needed for reference
–
 SRS document - Functional Requirements document

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 Test Policy document - This describes how far testing should take place before
releasing the product.
 Test Strategy document - This mentions detail aspects of test team,
responsibility matrix and rights/responsibility of test manager and test engineer.
 Traceability Matrix document - This is SDLC document, which is related to
requirement gathering process. As new requirements come, they are added to
this matrix. These matrices help testers know the source of requirement. They
can be traced forward and backward.

While Being Tested

The following documents may be required while testing is started and is being done:
 Test Case document - This document contains list of tests required to be
conducted. It includes Unit test plan, Integration test plan, System test plan and
Acceptance test plan.
 Test description - This document is a detailed description of all test cases and
procedures to execute them.
 Test case report - This document contains test case report as a result of the test.
 Test logs - This document contains test logs for every test case report.

After Testing

The following documents may be generated after testing :

 Test summary - This test summary is collective analysis of all test reports and
logs. It summarizes and concludes if the software is ready to be launched. The
software is released under version control system if it is ready to launch.

Testing vs. Quality Control, Quality Assurance and Audit

We need to understand that software testing is different from software quality assurance,
software quality control and software auditing.
 Software quality assurance - These are software development process
monitoring means, by which it is assured that all the measures are taken as per
the standards of organization. This monitoring is done to make sure that proper
software development methods were followed.
 Software quality control - This is a system to maintain the quality of software
product. It may include functional and non-functional aspects of software product,
which enhance the goodwill of the organization. This system makes sure that the
customer is receiving quality product for their requirement and the product
certified as ‘fit for use’.

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 Software audit - This is a review of procedure used by the organization to develop
the software. A team of auditors, independent of development team examines the
software process, procedure, requirements and other aspects of SDLC. The
purpose of software audit is to check that software and its development process,
both conform standards, rules and regulations.

Different Types of Software Testing

Functional Testing types include:
 Unit Testing
 Integration Testing
 System Testing
 Sanity Testing
 Smoke Testing
 Interface Testing
 Regression Testing
 Beta/Acceptance Testing
Non-functional Testing types include:
 Performance Testing
 Load Testing
 Stress Testing
 Volume Testing
 Security Testing
 Compatibility Testing
 Install Testing
 Recovery Testing
 Reliability Testing
 Usability Testing
 Compliance Testing
 Localization Testing
#1) Alpha Testing
It is the most common type of testing used in the Software industry. The objective of this testing
is to identify all possible issues or defects before releasing it into the market or to the user.
Alpha Testing is carried out at the end of the software development phase but before the Beta
Testing. Still, minor design changes may be made as a result of such testing.
Alpha Testing is conducted at the developer’s site. In-house virtual user environment can be
created for this type of testing.
#2) Acceptance Testing
An Acceptance Test is performed by the client and verifies whether the end to end the flow of the
system is as per the business requirements or not and if it is as per the needs of the end-user. Client
accepts the software only when all the features and functionalities work as expected.
It is the last phase of the testing, after which the software goes into production. This is also called
User Acceptance Testing (UAT).
#3) Ad-hoc Testing
The name itself suggests that this testing is performed on an Ad-hoc basis, i.e., with no reference
to the test case and without any plan or documentation in place for such type of testing.

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The objective of this testing is to find the defects and break the application by executing any flow
of the application or any random functionality.
Ad-hoc Testing is an informal way of finding defects and can be performed by anyone in the
project. It is difficult to identify defects without a test case but sometimes it is possible that defects
found during ad-hoc testing might not have been identified using existing test cases.
#4) Accessibility Testing
The aim of Accessibility Testing is to determine whether the software or application is accessible
for disabled people or not.
Here, disability means deaf, color blind, mentally disabled, blind, old age and other disabled
groups. Various checks are performed such as font size for visually disabled, color and contrast
for color blindness, etc.
#5) Beta Testing
Beta Testing is a formal type of Software Testing which is carried out by the customer. It is
performed in the Real Environment before releasing the product to the market for the actual end-
users.
Beta Testing is carried out to ensure that there are no major failures in the software or product and
it satisfies the business requirements from an end-user perspective. Beta Testing is successful when
the customer accepts the software. Usually, this testing is typically done by end-users or others. It
is the final testing done before releasing an application for commercial purpose. Usually, the Beta
version of the software or product released is limited to a certain number of users in a specific area.
So end-user actually uses the software and shares the feedback to the company. Company then
takes necessary action before releasing the software to the worldwide.
#6) Back-end Testing
Whenever an input or data is entered on front-end application, it stores in the database and the
testing of such database is known as Database Testing or Backend Testing. There are different
databases like SQL Server, MySQL, and Oracle, etc. Database Testing involves testing of table
structure, schema, stored procedure, data structure and so on. In Back-end Testing GUI is not
involved, testers are directly connected to the database with proper access and testers can easily
verify data by running a few queries on the database. There can be issues identified like data loss,
deadlock, data corruption etc during this back-end testing and these issues are critical to fixing
before the system goes live into the production environment
#7) Browser Compatibility Testing
It is a subtype of Compatibility Testing (which is explained below) and is performed by the testing
team. Browser Compatibility Testing is performed for web applications and it ensures that the
software can run with the combination of different browser and operating system. This type of
testing also validates whether web application runs on all versions of all browsers or not.
#8) Backward Compatibility Testing
It is a type of testing which validates whether the newly developed software or updated software
works well with the older version of the environment or not. Backward Compatibility Testing
checks whether the new version of the software works properly with file format created by an older
version of the software; it also works well with data tables, data files, data structure created by the
older version of that software. If any of the software is updated then it should work well on top of
the previous version of that software.
#9) Black Box Testing
Internal system design is not considered in this type of testing. Tests are based on the requirements
and functionality. Detailed information about the advantages, disadvantages, and types of Black
box Testing can be seen here.

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#10) Boundary Value Testing
This type of testing checks the behavior of the application at the boundary level.
Boundary Value Testing is performed for checking if defects exist at boundary values. Boundary
Value Testing is used for testing a different range of numbers. There is an upper and lower
boundary for each range and testing is performed on these boundary values. If testing requires a
test range of numbers from 1 to 500 then Boundary Value Testing is performed on values at 0, 1,
2, 499, 500 and 501.
#11) Branch Testing
It is a type of White box Testing and is carried out during Unit Testing. Branch Testing, the name
itself suggests that the code is tested thoroughly by traversing at every branch.
#12) Comparison Testing
Comparison of a product’s strength and weaknesses with its previous versions or other similar
products is termed as Comparison Testing.
#13) Compatibility Testing
It is a testing type in which it validates how software behaves and runs in a different environment,
web servers, hardware, and network environment. Compatibility testing ensures that software can
run on a different configuration, different database, different browsers, and their versions.
Compatibility testing is performed by the testing team.
#14) Component Testing
It is mostly performed by developers after the completion of unit testing. Component
Testing involves testing of multiple functionalities as a single code and its objective is to identify
if any defect exists after connecting those multiple functionalities with each other.
#15) End-to-End Testing
Similar to system testing, End-to-End Testing involves testing of a complete application
environment in a situation that mimics real-world use, such as interacting with a database, using
network communications, or interacting with other hardware, applications, or systems if
appropriate.
#16) Equivalence Partitioning
It is a testing technique and a type of Black Box Testing. During this Equivalence Partitioning, a
set of the group is selected and a few values or numbers are picked up for testing. It is understood
that all values from that group generate the same output. The aim of this testing is to remove
redundant test cases within a specific group which generates the same output but not any defect.
Suppose, the application accepts values between -10 to +10 so using equivalence partitioning the
values picked up for testing are zero, one positive value, one negative value. So the Equivalence
Partitioning for this testing is -10 to -1, 0, and 1 to 10.
#17) Example Testing
It means real-time testing. Example Testing includes the real-time scenario, it also involves the
scenarios based on the experience of the testers.
#18) Exploratory Testing
Exploratory Testing is informal testing performed by the testing team. The objective of this testing
is to explore the application and looking for defects that exist in the application.
Sometimes it may happen that during this testing major defect discovered can even cause a system
failure. During Exploratory Testing, it is advisable to keep a track of what flow you have tested
and what activity you did before the start of the specific flow. An Exploratory Testing technique is
performed without documentation and test cases.
#20) Functional Testing

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This type of testing ignores the internal parts and focuses only on the output to check if it is as per
the requirement or not. It is a Black-box type testing geared to the functional requirements of an
application. For detailed information about Functional Testing click here.
#21) Graphical User Interface (GUI) Testing
The objective of this GUI Testing is to validate the GUI as per the business requirement. The
expected GUI of the application is mentioned in the Detailed Design Document and GUI mockup
screens. The GUI Testing includes the size of the buttons and input field present on the screen,
alignment of all text, tables, and content in the tables. It also validates the menu of the application,
after selecting different menu and menu items, it validates that the page does not fluctuate and the
alignment remains same after hovering the mouse on the menu or sub-menu.
#22) Gorilla Testing
Gorilla Testing is a testing type performed by a tester and sometimes by the developer the as well.
In Gorilla Testing, one module or the functionality in the module is tested thoroughly and heavily.
The objective of this testing is to check the robustness of the application.
#23) Happy Path Testing
The objective of Happy Path Testing is to test an application successfully on a positive flow. It
does not look for negative or error conditions. The focus is only on the valid and positive inputs
through which application generates the expected output.
#24) Incremental Integration Testing
Incremental Integration Testing is a Bottom-up approach for testing i.e continuous testing of an
application when new functionality is added. Application functionality and modules should be
independent enough to test separately. This is done by programmers or by testers.
#25) Install/Uninstall Testing
Installation and Uninstallation Testing is done on full, partial, or upgrade install/uninstall
processes on different operating systems under different hardware or software environment.
#26) Integration Testing
Testing of all integrated modules to verify the combined functionality after integration is termed
as Integration Testing. Modules are typically code modules, individual applications, client and
server applications on a network, etc. This type of testing is especially relevant to client/server and
distributed systems.
#27) Load Testing
It is a type of Non-Functional Testing and the objective of Load Testing is to check how much
load or maximum workload a system can handle without any performance degradation.
Load Testing helps to find the maximum capacity of the system under specific load and any issues
that cause software performance degradation. Load testing is performed using tools like JMeter,
LoadRunner, WebLoad, Silk performer, etc.
#28) Monkey Testing
Monkey Testing is carried out by a tester assuming that if the monkey uses the application then
how random input, values will be entered by the Monkey without any knowledge or understanding
of the application. The objective of Monkey Testing is to check if an application or system gets
crashed by providing random input values/data. Monkey Testing is performed randomly and no
test cases are scripted and it is not necessary to
Monkey Testing is performed randomly and no test cases are scripted and it is not necessary to be
aware of the full functionality of the system.
#29) Mutation Testing
Mutation Testing is a type of white box testing in which the source code of one of the program is
changed and verifies whether the existing test cases can identify these defects in the system.

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The change in the program source code is very minimal so that it does not impact the entire
application, only the specific area having the impact and the related test cases should able to
identify those errors in the system.
#30) Negative Testing
Testers having the mindset of “attitude to break” and using Negative Testing they validate that if
system or application breaks. A Negative Testing technique is performed using incorrect data,
invalid data or input. It validates that if the system throws an error of invalid input and behaves as
expected.
#31) Non-Functional Testing
It is a type of testing for which every organization having a separate team which usually called as
Non-Functional Test (NFT) team or Performance team. Non-Functional Testing involves testing
of non-functional requirements such as Load Testing, Stress Testing, Security, Volume, Recovery
Testing, etc. The objective of NFT testing is to ensure whether the response time of software or
application is quick enough as per the business requirement. It should not take much time to load
any page or system and should sustain during peak load.
#32) Performance Testing
This term is often used interchangeably with ‘stress’ and ‘load’ testing. Performance Testing is
done to check whether the system meets the performance requirements. Different performance and
load tools are used to do this testing.
#33) Recovery Testing
It is a type of testing which validates how well the application or system recovers from crashes or
disasters. Recovery Testing determines if the system is able to continue the operation after a
disaster. Assume that application is receiving data through the network cable and suddenly that
network cable has been unplugged.
Sometime later, plug the network cable; then the system should start receiving data from where it
lost the connection due to network cable unplugged.
#34) Regression Testing
Testing an application as a whole for the modification in any module or functionality is termed as
Regression Testing. It is difficult to cover all the system in Regression Testing, so
typically Automation Testing Tools are used for these types of testing.
#35) Risk-Based Testing (RBT)
In Risk-Based Testing, the functionalities or requirements are tested based on their priority. Risk-
Based Testing includes testing of highly critical functionality, which has the highest impact on
business and in which the probability of failure is very high. The priority decision is based on the
business need, so once priority is set for all functionalities then high priority functionality or test
cases are executed first followed by medium and then low priority functionalities. The low priority
functionality may be tested or not tested based on the available time. The Risk-Based Testing is
carried out if there is insufficient time available to test entire software and software needs to be
implemented on time without any delay. This approach is followed only by the discussion and
approval of the client and senior management of the organization.
#36) Sanity Testing
Sanity Testing is done to determine if a new software version is performing well enough to accept
it for a major testing effort or not. If an application is crashing for the initial use then the system is
not stable enough for further testing. Hence a build or an application is assigned to fix it.
#37) Security Testing
It is a type of testing performed by a special team of testers. A system can be penetrated by any
hacking way. Security Testing is done to check how the software or application or website is secure

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from internal and external threats. This testing includes how much software is secure from the
malicious program, viruses and how secure and strong the authorization and authentication
processes are. It also checks how software behaves for any hackers attack and malicious programs
and how software is maintained for data security after such a hacker attack.
#38) Smoke Testing
Whenever a new build is provided by the development team then the Software Testing team
validates the build and ensures that no major issue exists. The testing team ensures that the build
is stable and a detailed level of testing is carried out further. Smoke Testing checks that no show
stopper defect exists in the build which will prevent the testing team to test the application in detail.
If testers find that the major critical functionality is broken down at the initial stage itself then
testing team can reject the build and inform accordingly to the development team. Smoke Testing
is carried out to a detailed level of any Functional or Regression Testing.
#39) Static Testing
Static Testing is a type of testing which is executed without any code. The execution is performed
on the documentation during the testing phase. It involves reviews, walkthrough, and inspection
of the deliverables of the project. Static Testing does not execute the code instead of the code
syntax, naming conventions are checked. Static Testing is also applicable for test cases, test plan,
design document. It is necessary to perform static testing by the testing team as the defects
identified during this type of testing are cost-effective from the project perspective.
#40) Stress Testing
This testing is done when a system is stressed beyond its specifications in order to check how and
when it fails. This is performed under heavy load like putting large number beyond storage
capacity, complex database queries, continuous input to the system or database load.
#41) System Testing
Under System Testing technique, the entire system is tested as per the requirements. It is a Black-
box type Testing that is based on overall requirement specifications and covers all the combined
parts of a system.
#42) Unit Testing
Testing of an individual software component or module is termed as Unit Testing. It is typically
done by the programmer and not by testers, as it requires detailed knowledge of the internal
program design and code. It may also require developing test driver modules or test harnesses.
#43) Usability Testing
Under Usability Testing, User-friendliness check is done. The application flow is tested to know
if a new user can understand the application easily or not, Proper help documented if a user gets
stuck at any point. Basically, system navigation is checked in this testing.
#44) Vulnerability Testing
The testing which involves identifying weakness in the software, hardware and the network is
known as Vulnerability Testing. Malicious programs, the hacker can take control of the system, if
it is vulnerable to such kind of attacks, viruses, and worms.
So it is necessary to check if those systems undergo Vulnerability Testing before production. It
may identify critical defects, flaws in the security.
#45) Volume Testing
Volume Testing is a type of Non-Functional Testing performed by the Performance Testing team.
The software or application undergoes a huge amount of data and Volume Testing checks the
system behavior and response time of the application when the system came across such a high
volume of data. This high volume of data may impact the system’s performance and speed of the
processing time.

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#46) White Box Testing
White Box Testing is based on the knowledge about the internal logic of an application’s code.
It is also known as Glass box Testing. Internal software and code working should be known for
performing this type of testing. Under these tests are based on the coverage of code statements,
branches, paths, conditions, etc. The above-mentioned Software Testing Types are just a part of
testing. However, there is still a list of more than 100+ types of testing, but all testing types are not
used in all types of projects.

Incremental Model
In incremental model the whole requirements is divided into builds. Multiple development cycles
take place here, making the life cycle a ” multi-waterfall” cycle. Cycles are divided up into smaller,
more easily managed modules. Each module passes through the requirements, designs,
implementation and testing phase. A working version of software is produce during the first
module, so you have working software early on during the software life cycle. Each subsequent
release of the modules adds function to the previous release. The process continues till the
complete system is achieved.

In the diagram above when we working incrementally we are adding piece by piece but expect that
each piece is fully finished. Thus keep on adding the piece until it’s complete. As in the image
above a person has thought of the application. Then he started building it and in the first iteration
the first module of the application or product is totally ready and can be demoed to the customers.
Likewise in the second iteration the other module is ready and integrated to the first module.
Similarly, in the third iteration the whole product is ready and integrated. Hence the product got
ready step by step. Diagram of incremental model:

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Design & Testing Iimpleme
develop ntation

Requirme Design & Testing Iimpleme

ntes develop ntation

Design & Testing Iimpleme

develop
Incremental life cycle model
ntation

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Advantages of incremental model :
 Generate working software quickly and early during the life cycle.
 This model is more flexible-less costly to change scope and requirements.
 It is easier to debug and test during smaller iteration.
 Lower initial delivery cost.
 Easier to manage risk because risky prices are identified and handled during it’d
iteration
Disadvantage of incremental model:
 Needs good planning and design
 Need a clear and complete definition of the whole system before it can be broken
down and built incrementally.
 Total cost is higher than waterfall.
When to use the incremental model:
 This model can be used when the requirement of the complete system are clearly
defined and understood.
 Major requirements must be defined; however some details can evolve with
time.
 There is a need to get a product to the market early.
 A new technology is being used
 Resources with needed skill set are not available
 There are some high risk feature and goals.

Prototype model
Freezing the requirements before a design or coding can proceed a throwaway prototype is to
understand the requirements. This prototype is developed based on the currently known
requirements. By using this prototype, the client can get an “actual feel” of the system since the
interaction with prototype can enable the client to better understand the requirements of desired
system. Prototyping is an attractive idea for complicated and large system for which there is no
manual process and existing system to help determining the requirements. The prototype is usually
not complete system and many of the details are not built in the prototype. The goal is providing
a system with overall functionality.
Diagram of prototype model:
start
Requirements Quick design Building prototype
gathering

stop
Refining prototype
prototypingEngineer
model product Customer
evaluation

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Advantages of prototype model:
 Users are actively involved in the development
 In this methodology a working system is provided, the user get a better understanding of
the system being developed.
 Error can be detect much earlier
 Quicker user feedback is available leading to batter solution
 Missing functionality can be identified easily
 Confusing and difficult functions can be identified requirements, validations, quick
implementations of incomplete but functional application.
Disadvantages of prototype model:
 Leads to implementing and then repairing way of building system
 Practically, this methodology may increase the complexity of the system as scope of the
system may expand beyond original plans.
 Incomplete application may cause application not to be used as the full system was
designed incomplete or inadequate problem analysis.
When to use prototype model:
 Prototype model should be used when the desired system needs to have a lot of interaction
with the end users.
 Typically online systems web interfaces have lot of interaction with the end users,
 are best suited for prototype model. It might take a while for a system to be built that
allows ease of use and needs minimal training of the end user
 Prototyping ensures that end users constantly work with the system and provide feedback
which incorporated in the prototype to result in a useable system. They are excellent for
designing good human interface system.

RAD MODEl
Rad model is rapid application development model. It is a type of incremental model. In RAD
model the component of functions are developed in parallel as if they were mini projects. The
developments are the time boxed, delivered and then assembled into a working prototype. This
can quickly give the customer something to see and use and to provide feedback regarding the
delivery and their requirements.
Diagram of RAD model:
Team #3
Team#1 Team #2
Business Business
modeling modeling
Business

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60-90 days

The phases in the rapid application development model are:

 Business modeling: The information flow is identified between various business
functions.
 Data modeling: information gathered from business modeling is used to is used to define
data objects that are needed for the business
 Process modeling: Data objects defined in data modeling are converted to achieve the
business information flow to achieve some specific business objectives. Description are
identified and created for CRUD
 Application generation: Automated tools are used to convert process model into code and
actual system.
 Testing and turn over: Test new components and all the interfaces.
Disadvantage of RAD model:
 Depends on a strong team and individual performance for identifying business
requirements.
 Only system that can be modularized can be built using RAD.
 High dependency on modeling skills
 Inapplicable to cheaper projects In cost of modeling and automated code generation is very
high.
When to use RAD model:
 Rad should be used when there is a need to create a system that can be modularized in 2-3
month of time.
 It should be used if there’s high quality of availability of designers of modeling and the
budget is high enough to afford their cost along with the cost of automated code generating
tools.
RAD SDLC model should be chosen only if resources with high business knowledge are available
and there is needed to produce the system in short spam of time(2-3 months).

Spiral model
The spiral model is similar to the incremental model with more emphases places on risk analysis.
The spiral model has four phases: RISK ANALYSIS,ENGINEERING &
EVALLUATION,PLANNING . A software projects repeatedly passes thorough these phases in

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iteration (called spiral in this model). The base line spiral, starting in the planning phase,
requirements are gathered and risk is assessed. Each subsequent spiral build on base line spiral.
Planning phases: Requirements are gathered during planning phase, requirements like ‘BRS’ that
is ‘business requirements specification’ and ‘SRS’ that is ‘system requirements specifications’.
Risk analysis: In the risk analysis phase, a process is undertaken to identified risk and alternate
solutions. A prototype is produce at the end of the risk analysis phase. If any risk is found during
the risk analysis phase then alternate solution suggested and implemented.
Engineering phase: In this phase software is developed, along with the testing at the end of phase,
Hence in this phase developments and testing is done.
Evaluation phase: this phase allow the customer to evaluate the output of the project to data
before the project continues to next spiral.
Diagram of spiral model:
Planning risk analysis

Requirement gethering Risk analysis

P rototype
Coding
customer eveluation
testing
Evaluation Engineering

Advantages of spiral model:

 High amount of risk analysis hence, avoidance of risk enhanced.
 Strong approval and documentation control.
 Additional functionality can be added at a later data.
 Software is produced early in the software lifecycle.
Disadvantage of spiral model:
 Can be a costly model to use.
 Risk analysis requires highly specific expertise
 Projects success is highly dependent in the risk analysis phase.
 Doesn’t work well for smaller projects
When to use spiral model:
 when cost and risk evaluation is important.
 for medium to high risk projects
 long term projects commitment unwise because if potential change to economic priorities
 requirements are complex
 new product line
significant changes are expected(research and exploration)

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Waterfall model
The waterfall model was first process model to be introduced. It is also referred to as linear-
sequential life cycle model. It is very simple to understand and use. In a waterfall model, each
phase must be completed fully before the next phase can be begin. This type of model is basically
used for the project which is small and there are no uncertain requirements. At the end of each
phase a review take place to determined if the project is on right path and whether or not to continue
or discard the project. In this model the testing start only after the development is complete. In
waterfall model phase don’t overlap.
Diagram of waterfall model:

“General overview of waterfall model”

Requirement
gathering & analysis

System design

Implementation

Deployment of system

Advantages of waterfall model: Testing

 This model is simple and easy to use and understand.
 It is easy to ménage due to the rigidity of the model each phase has specific deliverables
Maintenance
and a review process.
 In this model, phases are processed and completed one at a time. Phases don’t overlap.
 Waterfall model well for similar projects where requirements are very well understood.
Disadvantages of waterfall model:
 Once the application is in the testing stage, it is very difficult to go back and change
something that was not well thought out in the concept stage.
 No working software is produce until late during the lifecycle.
 High amounts of risk and uncertainty.
 Not a good model for complex and object-oriented projects.
 Poor model for long and ongoing projects
 Not suitable for the projects where requirements are at a moderate to high risk of
changing.
When to use the waterfall model:
 This model is only used when the requirements are very well known, clear and fixed.
 Product definition is stable.

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 Technology is understood
 There are no ambiguous requirements
 Ample resources with require expertise are available freely
 The projects is short
Very less customer enter action is involved during the development of the product. Once the
product is ready then only it can be demoed to the end users. Once the product is developed and if
any failure occurs then the cost of fixing such issues are very high, because we need to update
everywhere from document until the logic.
Developing a Design Model

To develop a complete specification of design (design model), four design models are
needed. These models are listed below.

 Data design: This specifies the data structures for implementing the software by
converting data objects and their relationships identified during the analysis phase.
Various studies suggest that design engineering should begin with data design,
since this design lays the foundation for all other design models.

 Architectural design: This specifies the relationship between the structural

elements of the software, design patterns, architectural styles, and the factors
affecting the ways in which architecture can be implemented.

 Component-level design: This provides the detailed description of how structural

elements of software will actually be implemented.

 Interface design: This depicts how the software communicates with the system
that interoperates with it and with the end-users.

Data design is the first design activity, which results in less complex, modular and
efficient program structure. The information domain model developed during analysis
phase is transformed into data structures needed for implementing the software. The
data objects, attributes, and relationships depicted in entity relationship diagrams and
the information stored in data dictionary provide a base for data design activity. During
the data design process, data types are specified along with the integrity rules required
for the data. For specifying and designing efficient data structures, some principles
should be followed. These principles are listed below.

1. The data structures needed for implementing the software as well-as the operations that
can be applied on them should be identified.
2. A data dictionary should be developed to depict how different data objects interact with
each other and what constraints are to be imposed on the elements of data structure.
3. Stepwise refinement should be used in data design process and detailed design decisions
should be made later in the process.
4. Only those modules that need to access data stored in a data structure directly should be
aware of the representation of the data structure.
5. A library containing the set of useful data structures along with the operations that can be
performed on them should be maintained.
6. Language used for developing the system should support abstract data types.

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The structure of data can be viewed at three levels, namely, program component level,
application level, and business level. At the program component level, the design of
data structures and the algorithms required to manipulate them is necessary, if high-
quality software is desired. At the application level, it is crucial to convert the data
model into a database so that the specific business objectives of a system could be
achieved. At the business level, the collection of information stored in different
databases should be reorganized into data warehouse, which enables data mining that
has an influential impact on the business.
Software maintenance
Software maintenance is widely accepted part of SDLC now a days. It stands for all the
modifications and updations done after the delivery of software product. There are
number of reasons, why modifications are required, some of them are briefly mentioned
below:
 Market Conditions - Policies, which changes over the time, such as taxation and
newly introduced constraints like, how to maintain bookkeeping, may trigger need
for modification.
 Client Requirements - Over the time, customer may ask for new features or
functions in the software.
 Host Modifications - If any of the hardware and/or platform (such as operating
system) of the target host changes, software changes are needed to keep
adaptability.
 Organization Changes - If there is any business level change at client end, such
as reduction of organization strength, acquiring another company, organization
venturing into new business, need to modify in the original software may arise.

Types of maintenance
In a software lifetime, type of maintenance may vary based on its nature. It may be just
a routine maintenance tasks as some bug discovered by some user or it may be a large
event in itself based on maintenance size or nature. Following are some types of
maintenance based on their characteristics:
 Corrective Maintenance - This includes modifications and updations done in
order to correct or fix problems, which are either discovered by user or concluded
by user error reports.
 Adaptive Maintenance - This includes modifications and updations applied to
keep the software product up-to date and tuned to the ever-changing world of
technology and business environment.
 Perfective Maintenance - This includes modifications and updates done in order
to keep the software usable over long period. It includes new features, new user
requirements for refining the software and improve its reliability and performance.

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 Preventive Maintenance - This includes modifications and updations to prevent
future problems of the software. It aims to attend problems, which are not
significant at this moment but may cause serious issues in future.

Software Analysis & Design Tools

Software analysis and design includes all activities, which help the transformation of
requirement specification into implementation. Requirement specifications specify all
functional and non-functional expectations from the software. These requirement
specifications come in the shape of human readable and understandable documents, to
which a computer has nothing to do.
Software analysis and design is the intermediate stage, which helps human-readable
requirements to be transformed into actual code.
Let us see few analysis and design tools used by software designers:

Data Flow Diagram

Data flow diagram is graphical representation of flow of data in an information system. It
is capable of depicting incoming data flow, outgoing data flow and stored data. The DFD
does not mention anything about how data flows through the system.
There is a prominent difference between DFD and Flowchart. The flowchart depicts flow
of control in program modules. DFDs depict flow of data in the system at various levels.
DFD does not contain any control or branch elements.

Types of DFD

Data Flow Diagrams are either Logical or Physical.

 Logical DFD - This type of DFD concentrates on the system process, and flow of
data in the system.For example in a Banking software system, how data is
moved between different entities.
 Physical DFD - This type of DFD shows how the data flow is actually
implemented in the system. It is more specific and close to the implementation.

DFD Components

DFD can represent Source, destination, storage and flow of data using the following set
of components -

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 Entities - Entities are source and destination of information data. Entities are
represented by a rectangles with their respective names.
 Process - Activities and action taken on the data are represented by Circle or
Round-edged rectangles.
 Data Storage - There are two variants of data storage - it can either be
represented as a rectangle with absence of both smaller sides or as an open-
sided rectangle with only one side missing.
 Data Flow - Movement of data is shown by pointed arrows. Data movement is
shown from the base of arrow as its source towards head of the arrow as
destination.

Levels of DFD

 Level 0 - Highest abstraction level DFD is known as Level 0 DFD, which depicts
the entire information system as one diagram concealing all the underlying
details. Level 0 DFDs are also known as context level DFDs.

 Level 1 - The Level 0 DFD is broken down into more specific, Level 1 DFD. Level
1 DFD depicts basic modules in the system and flow of data among various
modules. Level 1 DFD also mentions basic processes and sources of
information.

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 Level 2 - At this level, DFD shows how data flows inside the modules mentioned
in Level 1.
Higher level DFDs can be transformed into more specific lower level DFDs with
deeper level of understanding unless the desired level of specification is achieved.

Structure Charts
Structure chart is a chart derived from Data Flow Diagram. It represents the system in
more detail than DFD. It breaks down the entire system into lowest functional modules,
describes functions and sub-functions of each module of the system to a greater detail
than DFD.
Structure chart represents hierarchical structure of modules. At each layer a specific task
is performed.
Here are the symbols used in construction of structure charts -

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 Module - It represents process or subroutine or task. A control module branches
to more than one sub-module. Library Modules are re-usable and invokable from

any module.
 Condition - It is represented by small diamond at the base of module. It depicts
that control module can select any of sub-routine based on some condition.

 Jump - An arrow is shown pointing inside the module to depict that the control

will jump in the middle of the sub-module.

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 Loop - A curved arrow represents loop in the module. All sub-modules covered
by loop repeat execution of module.

 Data flow - A directed arrow with empty circle at the end represents data flow.

 Control flow - A directed arrow with filled circle at the end represents control

flow.

HIPO Diagram
HIPO (Hierarchical Input Process Output) diagram is a combination of two organized
method to analyze the system and provide the means of documentation. HIPO model
was developed by IBM in year 1970.
HIPO diagram represents the hierarchy of modules in the software system. Analyst uses
HIPO diagram in order to obtain high-level view of system functions. It decomposes
functions into sub-functions in a hierarchical manner. It depicts the functions performed
by system.

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HIPO diagrams are good for documentation purpose. Their graphical representation
makes it easier for designers and managers to get the pictorial idea of the system
structure.

In contrast to IPO (Input Process Output) diagram, which depicts the flow of control and
data in a module, HIPO does not provide any information about data flow or control flow.

Example

Both parts of HIPO diagram, Hierarchical presentation and IPO Chart are used for
structure design of software program as well as documentation of the same.

Structured English
Most programmers are unaware of the large picture of software so they only rely on what
their managers tell them to do. It is the responsibility of higher software management to
provide accurate information to the programmers to develop accurate yet fast code.
Other forms of methods, which use graphs or diagrams, may are sometimes interpreted
differently by different people.

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Hence, analysts and designers of the software come up with tools such as Structured
English. It is nothing but the description of what is required to code and how to code it.
Structured English helps the programmer to write error-free code.
Other form of methods, which use graphs or diagrams, may are sometimes interpreted
differently by different people. Here, both Structured English and Pseudo-Code tries to
mitigate that understanding gap.
Structured English is the It uses plain English words in structured programming
paradigm. It is not the ultimate code but a kind of description what is required to code
and how to code it. The following are some tokens of structured programming.
IF-THEN-ELSE,
DO-WHILE-UNTIL

Analyst uses the same variable and data name, which are stored in Data Dictionary,
making it much simpler to write and understand the code.

Example

We take the same example of Customer Authentication in the online shopping

environment. This procedure to authenticate customer can be written in Structured
English as:
Enter Customer_Name
SEEK Customer_Name in Customer_Name_DB file
IF Customer_Name found THEN
Call procedure USER_PASSWORD_AUTHENTICATE()
ELSE
PRINT error message
Call procedure NEW_CUSTOMER_REQUEST()
ENDIF

The code written in Structured English is more like day-to-day spoken English. It can not
be implemented directly as a code of software. Structured English is independent of
programming language.

Pseudo-Code
Pseudo code is written more close to programming language. It may be considered as
augmented programming language, full of comments and descriptions.
Pseudo code avoids variable declaration but they are written using some actual
programming language’s constructs, like C, Fortran, Pascal etc.
Pseudo code contains more programming details than Structured English. It provides a
method to perform the task, as if a computer is executing the code.

Example

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Program to print Fibonacci up to n numbers.
void function Fibonacci
Get value of n;
Set value of a to 1;
Set value of b to 1;
Initialize I to 0
for (i=0; i< n; i++)
{
if a greater than b
{
Increase b by a;
Print b;
}
else if b greater than a
{
increase a by b;
print a;
}
}

Decision Tables
A Decision table represents conditions and the respective actions to be taken to address
them, in a structured tabular format.
It is a powerful tool to debug and prevent errors. It helps group similar information into a
single table and then by combining tables it delivers easy and convenient decision-
making.

Creating Decision Table

To create the decision table, the developer must follow basic four steps:

 Identify all possible conditions to be addressed

 Determine actions for all identified conditions
 Create Maximum possible rules
 Define action for each rule
Decision Tables should be verified by end-users and can lately be simplified by
eliminating duplicate rules and actions.

Example

Let us take a simple example of day-to-day problem with our Internet connectivity. We
begin by identifying all problems that can arise while starting the internet and their
respective possible solutions.

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We list all possible problems under column conditions and the prospective actions under
column Actions.

Conditions/Actions Rules

Shows Connected N N N N Y Y Y Y

Conditions Ping is Working N N Y Y N N Y Y

Opens Website Y N Y N Y N Y N

Check network cable X

Check internet router X X X X

Actions Restart Web Browser X

Contact Service provider X X X X X X

Do no action
Table : Decision Table – In-house Internet Troubleshooting

Entity-Relationship Model
Entity-Relationship model is a type of database model based on the notion of real world
entities and relationship among them. We can map real world scenario onto ER database
model. ER Model creates a set of entities with their attributes, a set of constraints and
relation among them.
ER Model is best used for the conceptual design of database. ER Model can be
represented as follows :

 Entity - An entity in ER Model is a real world being, which has some properties
called attributes. Every attribute is defined by its corresponding set of values,
called domain.

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For example, Consider a school database. Here, a student is an entity. Student
has various attributes like name, id, age and class etc.
 Relationship - The logical association among entities is called relationship.
Relationships are mapped with entities in various ways. Mapping cardinalities
define the number of associations between two entities.
Mapping cardinalities:

o one to one
o one to many
o many to one
o many to many

Data Dictionary
Data dictionary is the centralized collection of information about data. It stores meaning
and origin of data, its relationship with other data, data format for usage etc. Data
dictionary has rigorous definitions of all names in order to facilitate user and software
designers.
Data dictionary is often referenced as meta-data (data about data) repository. It is
created along with DFD (Data Flow Diagram) model of software program and is expected
to be updated whenever DFD is changed or updated.

Requirement of Data Dictionary

The data is referenced via data dictionary while designing and implementing software.
Data dictionary removes any chances of ambiguity. It helps keeping work of
programmers and designers synchronized while using same object reference
everywhere in the program.
Data dictionary provides a way of documentation for the complete database system in
one place. Validation of DFD is carried out using data dictionary.

Contents

Data dictionary should contain information about the following

 Data Flow
 Data Structure
 Data Elements
 Data Stores
 Data Processing
Data Flow is described by means of DFDs as studied earlier and represented in algebraic
form as described.

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= Composed of

{} Repetition

() Optional

+ And

[/] Or

Example

Address = House No + (Street / Area) + City + State

Course ID = Course Number + Course Name + Course Level + Course Grades

Data Elements

Data elements consist of Name and descriptions of Data and Control Items, Internal or
External data stores etc. with the following details:

 Primary Name
 Secondary Name (Alias)
 Use-case (How and where to use)
 Content Description (Notation etc. )
 Supplementary Information (preset values, constraints etc.)

Data Store

It stores the information from where the data enters into the system and exists out of the
system. The Data Store may include -

 Files
o Internal to software.
o External to software but on the same machine.
o External to software and system, located on different machine.
 Tables
o Naming convention
o Indexing property

Data Processing

There are two types of Data Processing:

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 Logical: As user sees it
 Physical: As software sees it

Software Design Strategies

Software design is a process to conceptualize the software requirements into software
implementation. Software design takes the user requirements as challenges and tries to
find optimum solution. While the software is being conceptualized, a plan is chalked out
to find the best possible design for implementing the intended solution.
There are multiple variants of software design. Let us study them briefly:

Structured Design
Structured design is a conceptualization of problem into several well-organized elements
of solution. It is basically concerned with the solution design. Benefit of structured design
is, it gives better understanding of how the problem is being solved. Structured design
also makes it simpler for designer to concentrate on the problem more accurately.
Structured design is mostly based on ‘divide and conquer’ strategy where a problem is
broken into several small problems and each small problem is individually solved until
the whole problem is solved.
The small pieces of problem are solved by means of solution modules. Structured design
emphasis that these modules be well organized in order to achieve precise solution.
These modules are arranged in hierarchy. They communicate with each other. A good
structured design always follows some rules for communication among multiple
modules, namely -
Cohesion - grouping of all functionally related elements.
Coupling - communication between different modules.
A good structured design has high cohesion and low coupling arrangements.

Function Oriented Design

In function-oriented design, the system is comprised of many smaller sub-systems
known as functions. These functions are capable of performing significant task in the
system. The system is considered as top view of all functions.
Function oriented design inherits some properties of structured design where divide and
conquer methodology is used.
This design mechanism divides the whole system into smaller functions, which provides
means of abstraction by concealing the information and their operation.. These functional
modules can share information among themselves by means of information passing and
using information available globally.

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Another characteristic of functions is that when a program calls a function, the function
changes the state of the program, which sometimes is not acceptable by other modules.
Function oriented design works well where the system state does not matter and
program/functions work on input rather than on a state.

Design Process

 The whole system is seen as how data flows in the system by means of data flow
diagram.
 DFD depicts how functions changes data and state of entire system.
 The entire system is logically broken down into smaller units known as functions
on the basis of their operation in the system.
 Each function is then described at large.

Object Oriented Design

Object oriented design works around the entities and their characteristics instead of
functions involved in the software system. This design strategies focuses on entities and
its characteristics. The whole concept of software solution revolves around the engaged
entities.
Let us see the important concepts of Object Oriented Design:

 Objects - All entities involved in the solution design are known as objects. For
example, person, banks, company and customers are treated as objects. Every
entity has some attributes associated to it and has some methods to perform on
the attributes.
 Classes - A class is a generalized description of an object. An object is an
instance of a class. Class defines all the attributes, which an object can have and
methods, which defines the functionality of the object.
In the solution design, attributes are stored as variables and functionalities are
defined by means of methods or procedures.

 Encapsulation - In OOD, the attributes (data variables) and methods (operation

on the data) are bundled together is called encapsulation. Encapsulation not only
bundles important information of an object together, but also restricts access of
the data and methods from the outside world. This is called information hiding.
 Inheritance - OOD allows similar classes to stack up in hierarchical manner
where the lower or sub-classes can import, implement and re-use allowed
variables and methods from their immediate super classes. This property of OOD
is known as inheritance. This makes it easier to define specific class and to
create generalized classes from specific ones.
 Polymorphism - OOD languages provide a mechanism where methods
performing similar tasks but vary in arguments, can be assigned same name.
This is called polymorphism, which allows a single interface performing tasks for

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different types. Depending upon how the function is invoked, respective portion
of the code gets executed.

Design Process

Software design process can be perceived as series of well-defined steps. Though it

varies according to design approach (function oriented or object oriented, yet It may have
the following steps involved:

 A solution design is created from requirement or previous used system and/or

system sequence diagram.
 Objects are identified and grouped into classes on behalf of similarity in attribute
characteristics.
 Class hierarchy and relation among them is defined.
 Application framework is defined.

Software Design Approaches

Here are two generic approaches for software designing:

Top Down Design

We know that a system is composed of more than one sub-systems and it contains a
number of components. Further, these sub-systems and components may have their on
set of sub-system and components and creates hierarchical structure in the system.
Top-down design takes the whole software system as one entity and then decomposes
it to achieve more than one sub-system or component based on some characteristics.
Each sub-system or component is then treated as a system and decomposed further.
This process keeps on running until the lowest level of system in the top-down hierarchy
is achieved.
Top-down design starts with a generalized model of system and keeps on defining the
more specific part of it. When all components are composed the whole system comes
into existence.
Top-down design is more suitable when the software solution needs to be designed from
scratch and specific details are unknown.

Bottom-up Design

The bottom up design model starts with most specific and basic components. It proceeds
with composing higher level of components by using basic or lower level components. It
keeps creating higher level components until the desired system is not evolved as one
single component. With each higher level, the amount of abstraction is increased.

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Bottom-up strategy is more suitable when a system needs to be created from some
existing system, where the basic primitives can be used in the newer system.
Both, top-down and bottom-up approaches are not practical individually. Instead, a good
combination of both is used.

Software User Interface Design

User interface is the front-end application view to which user interacts in order to use the
software. User can manipulate and control the software as well as hardware by means
of user interface. Today, user interface is found at almost every place where digital
technology exists, right from computers, mobile phones, cars, music players, airplanes,
ships etc.
User interface is part of software and is designed such a way that it is expected to provide
the user insight of the software. UI provides fundamental platform for human-computer
interaction.
UI can be graphical, text-based, audio-video based, depending upon the underlying
hardware and software combination. UI can be hardware or software or a combination
of both.
The software becomes more popular if its user interface is:

 Attractive
 Simple to use
 Responsive in short time
 Clear to understand
 Consistent on all interfacing screens
UI is broadly divided into two categories:

 Command Line Interface

 Graphical User Interface

Command Line Interface (CLI)

CLI has been a great tool of interaction with computers until the video display monitors
came into existence. CLI is first choice of many technical users and programmers. CLI
is minimum interface a software can provide to its users.
CLI provides a command prompt, the place where the user types the command and
feeds to the system. The user needs to remember the syntax of command and its use.
Earlier CLI were not programmed to handle the user errors effectively.
A command is a text-based reference to set of instructions, which are expected to be
executed by the system. There are methods like macros, scripts that make it easy for
the user to operate.

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CLI uses less amount of computer resource as compared to GUI.

CLI Elements

A text-based command line interface can have the following elements:

 Command Prompt - It is text-based notifier that is mostly shows the context in
which the user is working. It is generated by the software system.
 Cursor - It is a small horizontal line or a vertical bar of the height of line, to
represent position of character while typing. Cursor is mostly found in blinking
state. It moves as the user writes or deletes something.
 Command - A command is an executable instruction. It may have one or more
parameters. Output on command execution is shown inline on the screen. When
output is produced, command prompt is displayed on the next line.

Graphical User Interface

Graphical User Interface provides the user graphical means to interact with the system.
GUI can be combination of both hardware and software. Using GUI, user interprets the
software.
Typically, GUI is more resource consuming than that of CLI. With advancing technology,
the programmers and designers create complex GUI designs that work with more
efficiency, accuracy and speed.

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GUI Elements

GUI provides a set of components to interact with software or hardware.

Every graphical component provides a way to work with the system. A GUI system has
following elements such as:

 Window - An area where contents of application are displayed. Contents in a

window can be displayed in the form of icons or lists, if the window represents file
structure. It is easier for a user to navigate in the file system in an exploring
window. Windows can be minimized, resized or maximized to the size of screen.
They can be moved anywhere on the screen. A window may contain another
window of the same application, called child window.
 Tabs - If an application allows executing multiple instances of itself, they appear
on the screen as separate windows. Tabbed Document Interface has come up
to open multiple documents in the same window. This interface also helps in
viewing preference panel in application. All modern web-browsers use this
feature.
 Menu - Menu is an array of standard commands, grouped together and placed at
a visible place (usually top) inside the application window. The menu can be
programmed to appear or hide on mouse clicks.
 Icon - An icon is small picture representing an associated application. When these
icons are clicked or double clicked, the application window is opened. Icon
displays application and programs installed on a system in the form of small
pictures.
 Cursor - Interacting devices such as mouse, touch pad, digital pen are
represented in GUI as cursors. On screen cursor follows the instructions from

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hardware in almost real-time. Cursors are also named pointers in GUI systems.
They are used to select menus, windows and other application features.

Application specific GUI components

A GUI of an application contains one or more of the listed GUI elements:

 Application Window - Most application windows uses the constructs supplied by
operating systems but many use their own customer created windows to contain
the contents of application.
 Dialogue Box - It is a child window that contains message for the user and
request for some action to be taken. For Example: Application generate a
dialogue to get confirmation from user to delete a file.

 Text-Box - Provides an area for user to type and enter text-based data.
 Buttons - They imitate real life buttons and are used to submit inputs to the
software.

 Radio-button - Displays available options for selection. Only one can be selected
among all offered.

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 Check-box - Functions similar to list-box. When an option is selected, the box is
marked as checked. Multiple options represented by check boxes can be
selected.
 List-box - Provides list of available items for selection. More than one item can
be selected.

Other impressive GUI components are:

 Sliders
 Combo-box
 Data-grid
 Drop-down list

User Interface Design Activities

There are a number of activities performed for designing user interface. The process of
GUI design and implementation is alike SDLC. Any model can be used for GUI
implementation among Waterfall, Iterative or Spiral Model.
A model used for GUI design and development should fulfill these GUI specific steps.

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 GUI Requirement Gathering - The designers may like to have list of all functional
and non-functional requirements of GUI. This can be taken from user and their
existing software solution.
 User Analysis - The designer studies who is going to use the software GUI. The
target audience matters as the design details change according to the knowledge
and competency level of the user. If user is technical savvy, advanced and
complex GUI can be incorporated. For a novice user, more information is included
on how-to of software.
 Task Analysis - Designers have to analyze what task is to be done by the
software solution. Here in GUI, it does not matter how it will be done. Tasks can
be represented in hierarchical manner taking one major task and dividing it further
into smaller sub-tasks. Tasks provide goals for GUI presentation. Flow of
information among sub-tasks determines the flow of GUI contents in the software.
 GUI Design & implementation - Designers after having information about
requirements, tasks and user environment, design the GUI and implements into
code and embed the GUI with working or dummy software in the background. It
is then self-tested by the developers.
 Testing - GUI testing can be done in various ways. Organization can have in-
house inspection, direct involvement of users and release of beta version are few
of them. Testing may include usability, compatibility, user acceptance etc.

GUI Implementation Tools

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There are several tools available using which the designers can create entire GUI on a
mouse click. Some tools can be embedded into the software environment (IDE).
GUI implementation tools provide powerful array of GUI controls. For software
customization, designers can change the code accordingly.
There are different segments of GUI tools according to their different use and platform.

Example

Mobile GUI, Computer GUI, Touch-Screen GUI etc. Here is a list of few tools which come
handy to build GUI:

 FLUID
 AppInventor (Android)
 LucidChart
 Wavemaker
 Visual Studio

User Interface Golden rules

The following rules are mentioned to be the golden rules for GUI design, described by
Shneiderman and Plaisant in their book (Designing the User Interface).
 Strive for consistency - Consistent sequences of actions should be required in
similar situations. Identical terminology should be used in prompts, menus, and
help screens. Consistent commands should be employed throughout.
 Enable frequent users to use short-cuts - The user’s desire to reduce the
number of interactions increases with the frequency of use. Abbreviations,
function keys, hidden commands, and macro facilities are very helpful to an expert
user.
 Offer informative feedback - For every operator action, there should be some
system feedback. For frequent and minor actions, the response must be modest,
while for infrequent and major actions, the response must be more substantial.
 Design dialog to yield closure - Sequences of actions should be organized into
groups with a beginning, middle, and end. The informative feedback at the
completion of a group of actions gives the operators the satisfaction of
accomplishment, a sense of relief, the signal to drop contingency plans and
options from their minds, and this indicates that the way ahead is clear to prepare
for the next group of actions.
 Offer simple error handling - As much as possible, design the system so the
user will not make a serious error. If an error is made, the system should be able
to detect it and offer simple, comprehensible mechanisms for handling the error.

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 Permit easy reversal of actions - This feature relieves anxiety, since the user
knows that errors can be undone. Easy reversal of actions encourages
exploration of unfamiliar options. The units of reversibility may be a single action,
a data entry, or a complete group of actions.
 Support internal locus of control - Experienced operators strongly desire the
sense that they are in charge of the system and that the system responds to their
actions. Design the system to make users the initiators of actions rather than the
responders.
 Reduce short-term memory load - The limitation of human information
processing in short-term memory requires the displays to be kept simple, multiple
page displays be consolidated, window-motion frequency be reduced, and
sufficient training time be allotted for codes, mnemonics, and sequences of
actions.

Software Implementation
Here, we will study about programming methods, documentation and challenges in
software implementation.

Structured Programming
In the process of coding, the lines of code keep multiplying, thus, size of the software
increases. Gradually, it becomes next to impossible to remember the flow of program. If
one forgets how software and its underlying programs, files, procedures are constructed
it then becomes very difficult to share, debug and modify the program. The solution to
this is structured programming. It encourages the developer to use subroutines and
loops instead of using simple jumps in the code, thereby bringing clarity in the code and
improving its efficiency Structured programming also helps programmer to reduce
coding time and organize code properly.
Structured programming states how the program shall be coded. Structured
programming uses three main concepts:
 Top-down analysis - A software is always made to perform some rational work.
This rational work is known as problem in the software parlance. Thus it is very
important that we understand how to solve the problem. Under top-down analysis,
the problem is broken down into small pieces where each one has some
significance. Each problem is individually solved and steps are clearly stated
about how to solve the problem.
 Modular Programming - While programming, the code is broken down into
smaller group of instructions. These groups are known as modules, subprograms
or subroutines. Modular programming based on the understanding of top-down
analysis. It discourages jumps using ‘goto’ statements in the program, which often
makes the program flow non-traceable. Jumps are prohibited and modular format
is encouraged in structured programming.

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 Structured Coding - In reference with top-down analysis, structured coding sub-
divides the modules into further smaller units of code in the order of their
execution. Structured programming uses control structure, which controls the flow
of the program, whereas structured coding uses control structure to organize its
instructions in definable patterns.

Functional Programming
Functional programming is style of programming language, which uses the concepts of
mathematical functions. A function in mathematics should always produce the same
result on receiving the same argument. In procedural languages, the flow of the program
runs through procedures, i.e. the control of program is transferred to the called
procedure. While control flow is transferring from one procedure to another, the program
changes its state.
In procedural programming, it is possible for a procedure to produce different results
when it is called with the same argument, as the program itself can be in different state
while calling it. This is a property as well as a drawback of procedural programming, in
which the sequence or timing of the procedure execution becomes important.
Functional programming provides means of computation as mathematical functions,
which produces results irrespective of program state. This makes it possible to predict
the behavior of the program.
Functional programming uses the following concepts:
 First class and High-order functions - These functions have capability to accept
another function as argument or they return other functions as results.
 Pure functions - These functions do not include destructive updates, that is, they
do not affect any I/O or memory and if they are not in use, they can easily be
removed without hampering the rest of the program.
 Recursion - Recursion is a programming technique where a function calls itself
and repeats the program code in it unless some pre-defined condition matches.
Recursion is the way of creating loops in functional programming.
 Strict evaluation - It is a method of evaluating the expression passed to a function
as an argument. Functional programming has two types of evaluation methods,
strict (eager) or non-strict (lazy). Strict evaluation always evaluates the expression
before invoking the function. Non-strict evaluation does not evaluate the
expression unless it is needed.
 λ-calculus - Most functional programming languages use λ-calculus as their type
systems. λ-expressions are executed by evaluating them as they occur.
Common Lisp, Scala, Haskell, Erlang and F# are some examples of functional
programming languages.

Programming style

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Programming style is set of coding rules followed by all the programmers to write the
code. When multiple programmers work on the same software project, they frequently
need to work with the program code written by some other developer. This becomes
tedious or at times impossible, if all developers do not follow some standard
programming style to code the program.
An appropriate programming style includes using function and variable names relevant
to the intended task, using well-placed indentation, commenting code for the
convenience of reader and overall presentation of code. This makes the program code
readable and understandable by all, which in turn makes debugging and error solving
easier. Also, proper coding style helps ease the documentation and updation.

Coding Guidelines

Practice of coding style varies with organizations, operating systems and language of
coding itself.
The following coding elements may be defined under coding guidelines of an
organization:
 Naming conventions - This section defines how to name functions, variables,
constants and global variables.
 Indenting - This is the space left at the beginning of line, usually 2-8 whitespace
or single tab.
 Whitespace - It is generally omitted at the end of line.
 Operators - Defines the rules of writing mathematical, assignment and logical
operators. For example, assignment operator ‘=’ should have space before and
after it, as in “x = 2”.
 Control Structures - The rules of writing if-then-else, case-switch, while-until and
for control flow statements solely and in nested fashion.
 Line length and wrapping - Defines how many characters should be there in one
line, mostly a line is 80 characters long. Wrapping defines how a line should be
wrapped, if is too long.
 Functions - This defines how functions should be declared and invoked, with and
without parameters.
 Variables - This mentions how variables of different data types are declared and
defined.
 Comments - This is one of the important coding components, as the comments
included in the code describe what the code actually does and all other associated
descriptions. This section also helps creating help documentations for other
developers.

Software Documentation

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Software documentation is an important part of software process. A well written
document provides a great tool and means of information repository necessary to know
about software process. Software documentation also provides information about how
to use the product.
A well-maintained documentation should involve the following documents:
 Requirement documentation - This documentation works as key tool for
software designer, developer and the test team to carry out their respective tasks.
This document contains all the functional, non-functional and behavioral
description of the intended software.
Source of this document can be previously stored data about the software,
already running software at the client’s end, client’s interview, questionnaires and
research. Generally it is stored in the form of spreadsheet or word processing
document with the high-end software management team.
This documentation works as foundation for the software to be developed and is
majorly used in verification and validation phases. Most test-cases are built
directly from requirement documentation.
 Software Design documentation - These documentations contain all the
necessary information, which are needed to build the software. It
contains: (a) High-level software architecture, (b) Software design
details, (c) Data flow diagrams, (d) Database design
These documents work as repository for developers to implement the software.
Though these documents do not give any details on how to code the program,
they give all necessary information that is required for coding and implementation.
 Technical documentation - These documentations are maintained by the
developers and actual coders. These documents, as a whole, represent
information about the code. While writing the code, the programmers also mention
objective of the code, who wrote it, where will it be required, what it does and how
it does, what other resources the code uses, etc.
The technical documentation increases the understanding between various
programmers working on the same code. It enhances re-use capability of the
code. It makes debugging easy and traceable.
There are various automated tools available and some comes with the
programming language itself. For example java comes JavaDoc tool to generate
technical documentation of code.
 User documentation - This documentation is different from all the above
explained. All previous documentations are maintained to provide information
about the software and its development process. But user documentation
explains how the software product should work and how it should be used to get
the desired results.

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These documentations may include, software installation procedures, how-to
guides, user-guides, uninstallation method and special references to get more
information like license updation etc.

Software Implementation Challenges

There are some challenges faced by the development team while implementing the
software. Some of them are mentioned below:
 Code-reuse - Programming interfaces of present-day languages are very
sophisticated and are equipped huge library functions. Still, to bring the cost down
of end product, the organization management prefers to re-use the code, which
was created earlier for some other software. There are huge issues faced by
programmers for compatibility checks and deciding how much code to re-use.
 Version Management - Every time a new software is issued to the customer,
developers have to maintain version and configuration related documentation.
This documentation needs to be highly accurate and available on time.
 Target-Host - The software program, which is being developed in the
organization, needs to be designed for host machines at the customers end. But
at times, it is impossible to design a software that works on the target machines.

Software Design Complexity

The term complexity stands for state of events or things, which have multiple
interconnected links and highly complicated structures. In software programming, as the
design of software is realized, the number of elements and their interconnections
gradually emerge to be huge, which becomes too difficult to understand at once.
Software design complexity is difficult to assess without using complexity metrics and
measures. Let us see three important software complexity measures.

Halstead's Complexity Measures

In 1977, Mr. Maurice Howard Halstead introduced metrics to measure software
complexity. Halstead’s metrics depends upon the actual implementation of program and
its measures, which are computed directly from the operators and operands from source
code, in static manner. It allows to evaluate testing time, vocabulary, size, difficulty,
errors, and efforts for C/C++/Java source code.
According to Halstead, “A computer program is an implementation of an algorithm
considered to be a collection of tokens which can be classified as either operators or
operands”. Halstead metrics think a program as sequence of operators and their
associated operands.
He defines various indicators to check complexity of module.

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Parameter Meaning

n1 Number of unique operators

n2 Number of unique operands

N1 Number of total occurrence of operators

N2 Number of total occurrence of operands

When we select source file to view its complexity details in Metric Viewer, the following
result is seen in Metric Report:

Metric Meaning Mathematical Representation

n Vocabulary n1 + n2

N Size N1 + N2

V Volume Length * Log2 Vocabulary

D Difficulty (n1/2) * (N1/n2)

E Efforts Difficulty * Volume

B Errors Volume / 3000

T Testing time Time = Efforts / S, where S=18 seconds.

Cyclomatic Complexity Measures

Every program encompasses statements to execute in order to perform some task and
other decision-making statements that decide, what statements need to be executed.
These decision-making constructs change the flow of the program.
If we compare two programs of same size, the one with more decision-making
statements will be more complex as the control of program jumps frequently.
McCabe, in 1976, proposed Cyclomatic Complexity Measure to quantify complexity of a
given software. It is graph driven model that is based on decision-making constructs of
program such as if-else, do-while, repeat-until, switch-case and goto statements.
Process to make flow control graph:

 Break program in smaller blocks, delimited by decision-making constructs.

 Create nodes representing each of these nodes.

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 Connect nodes as follows:
o If control can branch from block i to block j
Draw an arc
o From exit node to entry node
Draw an arc.
To calculate Cyclomatic complexity of a program module, we use the formula -
V(G) = e – n + 2

Where
e is total number of edges
n is total number of nodes

The Cyclomatic complexity of the above module is

e = 10
n = 8
Cyclomatic Complexity = 10 - 8 + 2
= 4
According to P. Jorgensen, Cyclomatic Complexity of a module should not exceed 10.

Function Point
It is widely used to measure the size of software. Function Point concentrates on
functionality provided by the system. Features and functionality of the system are used
to measure the software complexity.
Function point counts on five parameters, named as External Input, External Output,
Logical Internal Files, External Interface Files, and External Inquiry. To consider the
complexity of software each parameter is further categorized as simple, average or
complex.

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Let us see parameters of function point:

External Input

Every unique input to the system, from outside, is considered as external input.
Uniqueness of input is measured, as no two inputs should have same formats. These
inputs can either be data or control parameters.
 Simple - if input count is low and affects less internal files
 Complex - if input count is high and affects more internal files
 Average - in-between simple and complex.

External Output

All output types provided by the system are counted in this category. Output is
considered unique if their output format and/or processing are unique.
 Simple - if output count is low
 Complex - if output count is high
 Average - in between simple and complex.

Logical Internal Files

Every software system maintains internal files in order to maintain its functional
information and to function properly. These files hold logical data of the system. This
logical data may contain both functional data and control data.

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 Simple - if number of record types are low
 Complex - if number of record types are high
 Average - in between simple and complex.

External Interface Files

Software system may need to share its files with some external software or it may need
to pass the file for processing or as parameter to some function. All these files are
counted as external interface files.
 Simple - if number of record types in shared file are low
 Complex - if number of record types in shared file are high
 Average - in between simple and complex.

External Inquiry

An inquiry is a combination of input and output, where user sends some data to inquire
about as input and the system responds to the user with the output of inquiry processed.
The complexity of a query is more than External Input and External Output. Query is said
to be unique if its input and output are unique in terms of format and data.
 Simple - if query needs low processing and yields small amount of output data
 Complex - if query needs high process and yields large amount of output data
 Average - in between simple and complex.
Each of these parameters in the system is given weightage according to their class and
complexity. The table below mentions the weightage given to each parameter:

Parameter Simple Average Complex

Inputs 3 4 6

Outputs 4 5 7

Enquiry 3 4 6

Files 7 10 15

Interfaces 5 7 10

The table above yields raw Function Points. These function points are adjusted
according to the environment complexity. System is described using fourteen different
characteristics:

 Data communications

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 Distributed processing
 Performance objectives
 Operation configuration load
 Transaction rate
 Online data entry,
 End user efficiency
 Online update
 Complex processing logic
 Re-usability
 Installation ease
 Operational ease
 Multiple sites
 Desire to facilitate changes
These characteristics factors are then rated from 0 to 5, as mentioned below:

 No influence
 Incidental
 Moderate
 Average
 Significant
 Essential
All ratings are then summed up as N. The value of N ranges from 0 to 70 (14 types of
characteristics x 5 types of ratings). It is used to calculate Complexity Adjustment Factors
(CAF), using the following formulae:
CAF = 0.65 + 0.01N
Then,
Delivered Function Points (FP)= CAF x Raw FP
This FP can then be used in various metrics, such as:
Cost = $ / FP
Quality = Errors / FP
Productivity = FP / person-month

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