Advanced Software Engineering

(CS6401)
Autumn Semester (2024-2025)

Dr. Judhistir Mahapatro

Department of Computer Science and
Engineering
National Institute of Technology Rourkela
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Topics covered in Previous Lecture:
 Waterfall model of development
 Iterative waterfall
 Incremental
 Evolutionary model
 V-moel
 Prototyping
 Spiral

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Rapid application development (RAD)

• It was developed to overcome the rigidity (difficult to

accommodate the change of requests from the
customer) of the waterfall model (and its variants).

• It includes the features of both prototyping and

evolutionary models (where requirements gathering
is not fully done).
Rapid application development (RAD)
• It deploys an evolutionary delivery model to obtain
and incorporate the customer feedbacks on
incrementally delivered versions.

• Prototypes are constructed, and incrementally the

features are developed and delivered to the
customer. Unlike prototyping model, prototypes are
not thrown away but are enhanced and used in the
software construction.
 RAD Model

• Major goals:
• To decrease the time taken and the cost incurred to
develop software systems.

• To limit the costs of accommodating change

requests.

• To reduce the communication gap between the

customer and the developers.
 RAD Model

• It is established among the practitioners that only

through commenting on an installed application that
the exact requirements can be brought out.
RAD Model

• In iterative waterfall model

• Often clients do not know what they exactly wanted until
they saw a working system.
• Customers do not get to see the software until the
development is complete and deployed.
• Delivered software do not meet the customer
expectations and changes are incorporated through
subsequent maintenance efforts.
• Cost of accommodating the changes extremely high and
took long time to have a good solution
 RAD Model

• RAD model tries to overcome this problem by inviting

and incorporating customer feedback on successively
developed and refined prototypes.
Working of RAD

• Development takes place in a series of short

cycles or iterations.
• Development team focuses on the present
iteration only and plans are made for only one
increment at a time.
• The time planned for each iteration is called a time
box.
• Each iteration is planned to enhance the
implemented functionality of the application by
only a small amount.
Working of RAD

• During each time box, a quick-and-dirty prototype-

style software for some functionality is developed.

• Customer evaluates the prototype and gives

feedback on specific improvements.

• Prototype is refined based on the customer

feedback. However, it is not meant to be released to
the customer for regular use.
Working of RAD

• Development team includes a customer

representative to clarify the requirements.

• Customer suggest changes to a specific feature

already delivered and they have used it.

• Delivery of an incremental feature saves cost

• this is carried out before large investments have
been made in development and testing of large
number of features.
Working of RAD
• Decrease in development time and cost, and an
increased flexibility to incorporate changes

• Minimal use of planning

• Heavy reuse of any existing code through rapid

prototyping.
Working of RAD
• RAD model emphasizes code reuse

• Developers earliest to embrace object-oriented

languages and practices.

• RAD advocates use of specialized tools to facilitate

fast creation of working prototypes.

• Specialized tools support the following features:

• Visual style of development.
• Use of reusable components.
Applicability of RAD Model
• Characteristics of an application that indicate its
suitability to RAD style of development
• Customized software:
• It is developed for one or two customers
• Substantial reuse is usually made of code from pre-
existing software.
• For example, Automatic data processing activities such
as registration and grading at one or more educational
institutes. When any other institute requests for an
automation package in which a few aspects to be
tailored, Projects involving such tailoring can be carried
out speedily and cost-effectively.
Cont…

• Non-critical software:
• a quick-and-dirty software developed is usually far
from being optimal in performance and reliability.
• Highly constrained project schedule:
• It aims to reduce development time at the expense of
good documentation, performance and reliability.
• It is preferred for projects with very aggressive time
schedules
• Large Software:
• Software having many features can have incremental
development and delivery be meaningfully carried out.
Characteristics that render RAD unsuitable
• Generic products (wide distribution)
• Software products are generic in nature and
usually have wide distribution.
• Optimal performance and reliability are imperative
in a competitive market.
• Requirement of optimal performance and/or
reliability
• Categories of products require performance or
reliability
• Example, Operating System (high reliability
required)
Characteristics that render RAD unsuitable

• Lack of similar products:

• Developing company has not developed similar
software, it would hardly be able to reuse much of the
existing artifacts.
• Non-availability of sufficient plug-in components, it
becomes difficult to develop rapid prototypes through
reuse
• Monolithic entity:
• Especially small-sized software, it is hard to divide the
required features into parts that can be incrementally
developed and delivered.
RAD versus Prototyping model

• The code developed during prototype construction is

usually thrown away. In contrast, developed prototype
evolves into the deliverable software.

• Though RAD is expected to lead to faster software

development compared to the traditional models (such
as prototyping model), but the quality and reliability
would be inferior.
RAD versus iterative waterfall model
• All the functionalities of a software are developed
together whereas functionalities are developed
incrementally through heavy code and design reuse
• In RAD, prototype is refined based on customer
feedback. Whereas, iterative waterfall model does not
accommodate change requests.
• Important advantages of Iterative Waterfall Model:
• Use of iterative model leads to production of good
quality documentation that helps during maintenance.
• Developed software usually has better quality and
reliability
RAD versus evolutionary model

• In RAD, each increment results essentially a quick

and dirty prototype
• In evolutionary model, each increment is
systematically developed using the iterative waterfall
model.
• In RAD, software is developed in much shorter
increments compared to the evolutionary model.
Agile development model
• Over last two decades, rapid shift from development of
software products to development of customized
software
• Increased emphasis on scope for reuse.

• It was primarily designed to help a project to adapt to

change requests quickly. (overcome the shortcomings
of waterfall model)
Agile development model
• Aim of it is to facilitate quick project completion.

• How? Agility is achieved by fitting the process to the

project, i.e., removing activities that may not be
necessary for a specific project.

• Anything that wastes time and effort is avoided.

Popular agile SDLC models
• Crystal
• Atern
• Feature-driven development
• Scrum
• Extreme programming
• Lean development
• Unified process
Cont…

• Agile model adopts an iterative approach.

• Each iteration lasts for a couple of weeks only.

• Time to complete an iteration is called time box.

• End date for an iteration does not change.

• Team may reduce functionality during a time box if
necessary.
Essential Idea behind Agile Models

• It is suited for development of small projects.

• In case of large projects, collaborating teams working

at different locations are needed to have arranged as
many as meetings through video conferencing.

• The agile model emphasizes incremental release of

working software as the primary measure of progress.
Essential Idea behind Agile Models
Important Principles:
• Working software over comprehensive
documentation.
• Frequent delivery of incremental versions of the
software to the customer in intervals of few weeks.

• Requirement change requests from the customer are

encouraged and are efficiently incorporated.

• Enhanced communication among the team members

can be realized through face-to-face communication
rather than through exchange of formal documents.
Essential Idea behind Agile Models
Important Principles:
• Continuous interaction with the customer is
considered much more important than effective
contract negotiation.

• Agile development projects usually deploy pair

programming where two programmers work together
at one work station.
• One types in code while the other reviews the code.
• The two programmers switch their roles every hour
or so.
Advantages and Disadvantages
• Agility by relying on the tacit knowledge of the team
members about the development project and informal
communication to clarify issues rather spending time in
preparing formal documents and reviewing them.

• Lack of adequate documentation may lead to several

problems:
• Scope for confusion and important decision taken
during different phases can be misinterpreted at later
points
• It becomes difficult for design decisions to be reviewed
by external experts.
• When the project completes and the developers
disperse, maintenance can become a problem.
 Agile versus RAD model
• Agile model does not recommend developing
prototypes, but emphasizes systematic development
of each incremental feature. In contrast, quick-and-
dirty prototypes are then refined into production quality
code.

• Agile projects logically break down the solution into

features that are incrementally developed and
delivered. In contrast, developing all the features by
improving successively over time.
 Agile versus RAD model (Cont..)
• Agile team only demonstrates completed work to the
customer. In contrast, development teams
demonstrate to customers screen mock ups and
prototypes.
Extreme programming model

• It recommends taking these best practices that have

worked well in the past in program development
projects to extreme levels.
• If something is known to be beneficial, why not put
it to constant use?
• Based on this principle, it puts forward several key
practices that need to be practiced to the extreme.
Extreme programming model

• XP is based on frequent releases (called iterations),

during which the developers implement “user
stories”. It is similar to use cases, but are more
informal and are simpler.
• Example, a user story about a library software can
be:
1. a library member can issue a book.
2. A library member can query about the availability
of a book.
Extreme programming model

• Project team proposes a common vision of how the

system would work.
• Essentially, it’s the Architectural design

• Team may decide to construct a Spike for some

features.
• Spike: Very simple program constructed to
explore the suitability of a solution being
proposed.
• Its similar to Prototype.
Good practices recognized
• Code review:
• helps detect and correct errors most efficiently.
• Pair programming as the way to achieve continuous
review. While one writes other reviews the code
• Testing:
• Suggests Test-driven development, where test cases
are written even before any code is written.
• Incremental development:
• It helps to get customer feedback
Good practices recognized

• Simplicity:
• Simplest code ignores the aspects such as efficiency,
reliability, maintainability, etc.
• Once the basic functionality works then these aspects
can be introduced through refactoring.
• Design:
• Everybody should design daily.
• Quality design can be achieved through refactoring
(improve the nonfunctional attributes (such as
readability, and maintainability) of the software without
affecting the external behavior).
Good practices recognized

• Integration Testing:
• Helps identify bugs at the interfaces
• Developers should achieve continuous integration by
building and performing integration testing several times
a day.
XP prescribes several basic activities

Coding:
• Utmost care and attention needed for coding activity
• Without coding it is not possible to have a working
system
• Coding in XP has a slightly different meaning.
• Example: coding activity includes drawing diagrams
(modeling) that will be transformed to code, scripting a
web-based system and choosing among several
alternative solutions.
XP prescribes several basic activities

Testing:
• High importance for testing and considers it as a
primary means for developing a fault-free software
Listening:
• Developers need to listen to the customers carefully
• Customers usually have the domain knowledge but
programmers may not have in-depth knowledge of the
domain
XP prescribes several basic activities
Designing:
• Without good design implementation becomes too
complex, and dependencies within the system become
too numerous, and it becomes very difficult to
comprehend the solution.
• Maintenance difficult and expensive
• Emphasizes use of a suitable design technique
Feedback:
• Understanding the exact requirement
• Feedback is critical to learning and making changes
• Frequent contact with the customer makes the
development effective
XP prescribes several basic activities

Simplicity:
• Build something simple that will work today rather
something taking a lot of time never getting used
• Attention on making specific functions that are
immediately needed
Applicability of XP model

• Projects involving new technology or research projects

• requirement change rapidly and unforeseen technical
problems need to be resolved.

• Small projects
• face to face meeting is easier to achieve.
Characteristics not suited to use of XP
model

• Stable requirements
• Almost no change to the gathered
requirements
• Mission critical or safety critical systems
• It can not ensure the required reliability
Reference

 R. Mall, Fundamentals of Software Engineering, Prentice Hall of

India , 2014

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