Chapter 2 – Software Processes

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Topics covered

 Software process models

 Process activities

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The software process

 A structured set of activities required to develop a

software system.
 Many different software processes but all involve:
 Specification – defining what the system should do;
 Design and implementation – defining the organization of the
system and implementing the system;
 Validation – checking that it does what the customer wants;
 Evolution – changing the system in response to changing
customer needs.
 A software process model is an abstract representation
of a process. It presents a description of a process from
some particular perspective.
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Software process descriptions

 When we describe and discuss processes, we usually

talk about the activities in these processes such as
specifying a data model, designing a user interface, etc.
and the ordering of these activities.
 Process descriptions may also include:
 Products, which are the outcomes of a process activity;
 Roles, which reflect the responsibilities of the people involved in
the process;
 Pre- and post-conditions, which are statements that are true
before and after a process activity has been enacted or a
product produced.

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Plan-driven and agile processes

 Plan-driven processes are processes where all of the

process activities are planned in advance and progress
is measured against this plan.
 In agile processes, planning is incremental and it is
easier to change the process to reflect changing
customer requirements.
 In practice, most practical processes include elements of
both plan-driven and agile approaches.
 There are no right or wrong software processes.

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 Software process models

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Software process models

 The waterfall model

 Plan-driven model. Separate and distinct phases of specification
and development.
 Incremental development
 Specification, development and validation are interleaved. May
be plan-driven or agile.
 Integration and configuration
 The system is assembled from existing configurable
components. May be plan-driven or agile.
 In practice, most large systems are developed using a
process that incorporates elements from all of these
models.
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The waterfall model

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Waterfall model phases

 There are separate identified phases in the waterfall

model:
 Requirements analysis and definition
 System and software design
 Implementation and unit testing
 Integration and system testing
 Operation and maintenance
 The main drawback of the waterfall model is the difficulty
of accommodating change after the process is underway.
In principle, a phase has to be complete before moving
onto the next phase.

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Waterfall model problems

 Inflexible partitioning of the project into distinct stages

makes it difficult to respond to changing customer
requirements.
 Therefore, this model is only appropriate when the requirements
are well-understood and changes will be fairly limited during the
design process.
 Few business systems have stable requirements.
 The waterfall model is mostly used for large systems
engineering projects where a system is developed at
several sites.
 In those circumstances, the plan-driven nature of the waterfall
model helps coordinate the work.

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Incremental development

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Incremental development benefits

 The cost of accommodating changing customer

requirements is reduced.
 The amount of analysis and documentation that has to be
redone is much less than is required with the waterfall model.
 It is easier to get customer feedback on the development
work that has been done.
 Customers can comment on demonstrations of the software and
see how much has been implemented.
 More rapid delivery and deployment of useful software to
the customer is possible.
 Customers are able to use and gain value from the software
earlier than is possible with a waterfall process.
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Incremental development problems

 The process is not visible.

 Managers need regular deliverables to measure progress. If
systems are developed quickly, it is not cost-effective to produce
documents that reflect every version of the system.
 System structure tends to degrade as new increments
are added.
 Unless time and money is spent on refactoring to improve the
software, regular change tends to corrupt its structure.
Incorporating further software changes becomes increasingly
difficult and costly.

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Integration and configuration

 Based on software reuse where systems are integrated

from existing components or application systems
(sometimes called COTS -Commercial-off-the-shelf)
systems).
 Reused elements may be configured to adapt their
behaviour and functionality to a user’s requirements
 Reuse is now the standard approach for building many
types of business system
 Reuse covered in more depth in Chapter 15.

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Types of reusable software

 Stand-alone application systems (sometimes called

COTS) that are configured for use in a particular
environment.
 Collections of objects that are developed as a package
to be integrated with a component framework such as
.NET or J2EE.
 Web services that are developed according to service
standards and which are available for remote invocation.

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Reuse-oriented software engineering

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Key process stages

 Requirements specification
 Software discovery and evaluation
 Requirements refinement
 Application system configuration
 Component adaptation and integration

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Advantages and disadvantages

 Reduced costs and risks as less software is developed

from scratch
 Faster delivery and deployment of system
 But requirements compromises are inevitable so system
may not meet real needs of users
 Loss of control over evolution of reused system elements

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 Process activities

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Process activities

 Real software processes are inter-leaved sequences of

technical, collaborative and managerial activities with the
overall goal of specifying, designing, implementing and
testing a software system.
 The four basic process activities of specification,
development, validation and evolution are organized
differently in different development processes.
 For example, in the waterfall model, they are organized
in sequence, whereas in incremental development they
are interleaved.

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The requirements engineering process

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Software specification

 The process of establishing what services are required

and the constraints on the system’s operation and
development.
 Requirements engineering process
 Requirements elicitation and analysis
• What do the system stakeholders require or expect from the system?
 Requirements specification
• Defining the requirements in detail
 Requirements validation
• Checking the validity of the requirements

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Software design and implementation

 The process of converting the system specification into

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

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A general model of the design process

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Design activities

 Architectural design, where you identify the overall

structure of the system, the principal components
(subsystems or modules), their relationships and how
they are distributed.
 Database design, where you design the system data
structures and how these are to be represented in a
database.
 Interface design, where you define the interfaces
between system components.
 Component selection and design, where you search for
reusable components. If unavailable, you design how it
will operate.
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System implementation

 The software is implemented either by developing a

program or programs or by configuring an application
system.
 Design and implementation are interleaved activities for
most types of software system.
 Programming is an individual activity with no standard
process.
 Debugging is the activity of finding program faults and
correcting these faults.

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Software validation

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

that a system conforms to its specification and meets the
requirements of the system customer.
 Involves checking and review processes and system
testing.
 System testing involves executing the system with test
cases that are derived from the specification of the real
data to be processed by the system.
 Testing is the most commonly used V & V activity.

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Stages of testing

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Testing stages

 Component testing
 Individual components are tested independently;
 Components may be functions or objects or coherent groupings
of these entities.
 System testing
 Testing of the system as a whole. Testing of emergent properties
is particularly important.
 Customer testing
 Testing with customer data to check that the system meets the
customer’s needs.

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Testing phases in a plan-driven software
process (V-model)

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Software evolution

 Software is inherently flexible and can change.

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

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System evolution

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Key points

 Software processes are the activities involved in

producing a software system. Software process models
are abstract representations of these processes.
 General process models describe the organization of
software processes.
 Examples of these general models include the ‘waterfall’ model,
incremental development, and reuse-oriented development.
 Requirements engineering is the process of developing a
software specification.

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Key points

 Design and implementation processes are concerned

with transforming a requirements specification into an
executable software system.
 Software validation is the process of checking that the
system conforms to its specification and that it meets the
real needs of the users of the system.
 Software evolution takes place when you change
existing software systems to meet new requirements.
The software must evolve to remain useful.

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