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Software Processes

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Topics covered

 Software process mode ls

 Process activities
 Coping with change
 Process improvement

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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. 13
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 COTS (Commercial-off-the-
shelf) systems.
 Reused elements may be configured to adapt the
behavior and functionality according to a user’s
requirements
 Reuse is now the standard approach for building many
types of business systems

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Types of reusable software

 Stand-alone application systems (sometimes ca l l ed

COTS) that are configured for use in a particular
environment.
 Collections of objects that are developed as a pac kage
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/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, 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
(e.g. usability, reliability, security, volume etc) is particularly
important.
 Acceptance testing
 Testing with customer data to check that the system meets the
customer’s needs.

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Testing phases in a plan-driven software process (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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Coping with change

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Coping with change

 Change is inevitable in all large software projects.

 Business changes lead to new and changed
system requirements
 New technologies open up new possibilities for improving
implementations
 Changing platforms require application changes
 Change leads to rework so the costs of change Include
both rework (e.g. re-analysing requirements) as well as
the costs of implementing new functionality

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Reducing the costs of rework

 Change anticipation, where the software process

includes activities that can anticipate possible changes
before significant rework is required.
 For example, a prototype system may be developed to show
some key features of the system to customers.
 Change tolerance, where the process is designed so that
changes can be accommodated at relatively low cost.
 This normally involves some form of incremental development.
Proposed changes may be implemented in increments that
have not yet been developed. If this is impossible, then only a
single increment (a small part of the system) may have to be
altered to incorporate the change.

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Coping with changing requirements

 System prototyping, where a version of the system or

part of the system is developed quickly to check the
customer’s requirements and the feasibility of design
decisions. This approach supports change anticipation.
 Incremental delivery, where system increments are
delivered to the customer for comment and
experimentation. This supports both change avoidance
and change tolerance.

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Software prototyping

 A prototype is an initial version of a system used to

demonstrate concepts and try out design options.
 A prototype can be used in:
 The requirements engineering process to help with
requirements
elicitation and validation;
 In design processes to explore options and develop a UI design;
 In the testing process to run back-to-back tests.

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Benefits of prototyping

 Improved system usability.

 A closer match to users’ real needs.
 Improved design quality.
 Improved maintainability.
 Reduced development effort.

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The process of prototype development

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Prototype development

 May be based on rapid prototyping languages or tools

(axure RP, Grid, Flinto, Storyboarding tools)
 May involve leaving out functionality
 Prototype should focus on areas of the product that are not
well- understood;
 Error checking and recovery may not be included in the
prototype;
 Focus on functional rather than non-functional
requirements such as reliability and security

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Throw-away prototypes

 Prototypes should be discarded after development as

they are not a good basis for a production system:
 It may be impossible to tune the system to meet non-
functional requirements;
 Prototypes are normally undocumented;
 The prototype structure is usually degraded through
rapid change;
 The prototype probably will not meet normal
organisational
quality standards.

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Incremental delivery

 Rather than deliver the system as a single delivery, the

development and delivery is broken down into
increments with each increment delivering part of the
required functionality.
 User requirements are prioritised and the highest
priority
requirements are included in early increments.
 Once the development of an increment is started, the
requirements are frozen though requirements for later
increments can continue to evolve.

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Incremental development and delivery

 Incremental development
 Develop the system in increments and evaluate each
increment before proceeding to the development of the next
increment;
 Normal approach used in agile methods;
 Evaluation done by user/customer proxy.
 Incremental delivery
 Deploy an increment for use by end-users;
 More realistic evaluation about practical use of software;
 Difficult to implement for replacement systems as
increments have less functionality than the system being
replaced.

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Incremental delivery

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Incremental delivery advantages

 Customer value can be delivered with each increment so

system functionality is available earlier.
 Early increments act as a prototype to help elicit
requirements for later increments.
 Lower risk of overall project failure.
 The highest priority system services tend to receive the
most testing.

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Incremental delivery problems

 Most systems require a set of basic facilities that are

used by different parts of the system.
 As requirements are not defined in detail until an increment is
to be implemented, it can be hard to identify common facilities
that are needed by all increments.
 The essence of iterative processes is that the
specification is developed in conjunction with the
software.
 However, this conflicts with the procurement model of many
organizations, where the complete system specification is part
of the system development contract.

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Software Process improvement

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Process improvement

 Many software companies have turned to software

process improvement as a way of enhancing the quality
of their software, reducing costs or accelerating their
development processes.
 Process improvement means understanding existing
processes and changing these processes to increase
product quality and/or reduce costs and
development time.

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Approaches to improvement

 The process maturity approach, which focuses on

improving process and project management
and introducing good software engineering
practice.
 The level of process maturity reflects the extent to which
good technical and management practice has been adopted
in organizational software development processes.
 The agile approach, which focuses on iterative
development and the reduction of overheads in the
software process.
 The primary characteristics of agile methods are rapid delivery
of functionality and responsiveness to changing customer
requirements.
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The process improvement cycle

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Process improvement activities

 Process measurement
 You measure one or more attributes of the software process
or product. These measurements forms a baseline that helps
you decide if process improvements have been effective.
 Process analysis
 The current process is assessed, and process weaknesses
and bottlenecks are identified. Process models (sometimes
called process maps) that describe the process may be
developed.
 Process change
 Process changes are proposed to address some of the
identified process weaknesses. These are introduced and the
cycle resumes to collect data about the effectiveness of the
changes. 52
Process measurement

 Wherever possible, quantitative process data

should be collected
 However, where organisations do not have clearly defined
process standards this is very difficult as you don’t know what
to measure. A process may have to be defined before any
measurement is possible.
 Process measurements should be used to
assess process improvements
 But this does not mean that measurements should drive
the improvements. The improvement driver should be the
organizational objectives.

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Process metrics

 Time taken for process activities to be

completed
 E.g. Calendar time or effort to complete
an activity or process.
 Resources required for processes or
activities
 E.g. Total effort in person-days.
 Number of occurrences of a particular
event
 E.g. Number of defects discovered.

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CMMI (Capability maturity model
integration) levels

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The SEI capability maturity model

 Initial
 Essentially uncontrolled
 Repeatable
 Product management procedures defined and used
 Defined
 Process management procedures and strategies
defined and used
 Managed
 Quality management strategies defined and used
 Optimising
 Process improvement strategies defined and used
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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.
 Processes should include activities such as prototyping
and incremental delivery to cope with change.
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Key points

 Processes may be structured for iterative development

and delivery so that changes may be made without
disrupting the system as a whole.
 The principal approaches to process improvement
are agile approaches, geared to reducing process
overheads, and maturity-based approaches based on
better process management and the use of good
software engineering practice.
 The SEI process maturity framework identifies maturity
levels that essentially correspond to the use of good
software engineering practice.

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