UNIT-I

Overview: Introduction:
Professional Software Development, Software Engineering Ethics, Case
studies.

Software Processes: Models, Process activities, Coping with Change, Process

improvement.

Requirements Engineering and System Modelling:

Software Requirements: Functional and Non-functional requirements,
Requirements Elicitation, Specification, Validation and Change
Topics covered

Software Processes
 Software process models
 Process activities
 Coping with change
 Process improvement

Chapter 2 Software Processes 2

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.
Chapter 2 Software Processes 3
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.

Chapter 2 Software Processes 4

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.

Chapter 2 Software Processes 5

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.
 Reuse-oriented software engineering
▪ The system is assembled from existing 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.
Chapter 2 Software Processes 6
The waterfall model

Chapter 2 Software Processes 7

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.

Chapter 2 Software Processes 8

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.

Chapter 2 Software Processes 9

Incremental development

Chapter 2 Software Processes 10

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.
Chapter 2 Software Processes 11
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.

Chapter 2 Software Processes 12

Reuse-oriented software engineering

 Based on systematic reuse where systems are

integrated from existing components or COTS
(Commercial-off-the-shelf) systems.
 Process stages
▪ Component analysis;
▪ Requirements modification;
▪ System design with reuse;
▪ Development and integration.

Chapter 2 Software Processes 13

Reuse-oriented software engineering

Chapter 2 Software Processes 14

Types of software component

 Web services that are developed according to service

standards and which are available for remote invocation.
 Collections of objects that are developed as a package
to be integrated with a component framework such as
.NET or J2EE.
 Stand-alone software systems (COTS) that are
configured for use in a particular environment.

Chapter 2 Software Processes 15

The requirements engineering process

Chapter 2 Software Processes 16

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.

Chapter 2 Software Processes 17

A general model of the design process

Chapter 2 Software Processes 18

Design activities

 Architectural design, where you identify the overall

structure of the system, the principal components
(sometimes called sub-systems or modules), their
relationships and how they are distributed.
 Interface design, where you define the interfaces
between system components.
 Component design, where you take each system
component and design how it will operate.
 Database design, where you design the system data
structures and how these are to be represented in a
database.
Chapter 2 Software Processes 19
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.

Chapter 2 Software Processes 20

Stages of testing

Chapter 2 Software Processes 21

Testing stages

 Development or 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.
 Acceptance testing
▪ Testing with customer data to check that the system meets the
customer’s needs.

Chapter 2 Software Processes 22

Testing phases in a plan-driven software
process

Chapter 2 Software Processes 23

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

Chapter 2 Software Processes 24

Reducing the costs of rework

 Change avoidance, where the software process includes

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

Chapter 2 Software Processes 25

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.

Chapter 2 Software Processes 26

Benefits of prototyping

 Improved system usability.

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

Chapter 2 Software Processes 27

The process of prototype development

Chapter 2 Software Processes 28

Prototype development

 May be based on rapid prototyping languages or 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

Chapter 2 Software Processes 29

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.

Chapter 2 Software Processes 30

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.

Chapter 2 Software Processes 31

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.

Chapter 2 Software Processes 32

Incremental delivery

Chapter 2 Software Processes 33

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.

Chapter 2 Software Processes 34

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.

Chapter 2 Software Processes 35

Process Improvement
Process Improvement

 Understanding, Modelling and Improving the Software

Process
Objectives

 To explain the principles of software process

improvement
 To explain how software process factors influence
software quality and productivity
 To introduce the SEI Capability Maturity Model
and to explain why it is influential. To discuss
the applicability of that model
 To explain why CMM-based improvement is not
universally applicable
Topics covered

 Process and product quality

 Process analysis and modelling
 Process measurement
 The SEI process maturity model
 Process classification
Process improvement

 Understanding existing processes

 Introducing process changes to achieve organisational
objectives which are usually focused on quality
improvement, cost reduction and schedule acceleration
 Most process improvement work so far has
focused on defect reduction. This reflects the increasing
attention paid by industry to quality
 However, other process attributes can be the focus of
improvement
Process attributes
Process improvement stages

 Process analysis
▪ Model and analyse (quantitatively if possible) existing
processes
 Improvement identification
▪ Identify quality, cost or schedule bottlenecks
 Process change introduction
▪ Modify the process to remove identified bottlenecks
 Process change training
▪ Train staff involved in new process proposals
 Change tuning
▪ Evolve and improve process improvements
The process improvement process
Process and product quality

 Process quality and product quality are closely

related
 A good process is usually required to produce a
good product
 For manufactured goods, process is the
principal quality determinant
 For design-based activity, other factors are also involved
especially the capabilities of the designers
Principal product quality factors
Quality factors

 For large projects with ‘average’ capabilities, the

development process determines product quality
 For small projects, the capabilities of the developers is
the main determinant
 The development technology is particularly significant for
small projects
 In all cases, if an unrealistic schedule is imposed then
product quality will suffer
Process analysis and modelling

 Process analysis
▪ The study of existing processes to understand the relationships
between parts of the process and to compare them with other
processes
 Process modelling
▪ The documentation of a process which records the tasks, the
roles and the entities used
▪ Process models may be presented from different perspectives
Process analysis and modelling

 Study an existing process to understand its

activities
 Produce an abstract model of the process. You should
normally represent this graphically. Several different
views (e.g. activities, deliverables, etc.) may be required
 Analyse the model to discover process
problems. Involves discussing activities with
stakeholders
Process analysis techniques

 Published process models and process

standards
▪ It is always best to start process analysis with an existing model.
People then may extend and change this.
 Questionnaires and interviews
▪ Must be carefully designed. Participants may tell you what they
think you want to hear
 Ethnographic analysis
▪ Involves assimilating process knowledge by observation
Elements of a
process model
The module testing activity
Activities in module testing

©Ian Sommerville 1995 Software Engineering, 5th edition. Chapter 31. Slide ##
Process exceptions

 Software processes are complex and process models

cannot effectively represent how to handle exceptions
▪ Several key people becoming ill just before a critical review
▪ A complete failure of a communication processor so that no e-
mail is available for several days
▪ Organisational reorganisation
▪ A need to respond to an unanticipated request for new proposals
 Under these circumstances, the model is suspended and
managers use their initiative to deal with the exception
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
Classes of process measurement

 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
Goal-Question-Metric Paradigm

 Goals
▪ What is the organisation trying to achieve? The objective of
process improvement is to satisfy these goals
 Questions
▪ Questions about areas of uncertainty related to the goals. You
need process knowledge to derive these
 Metrics
▪ Measurements to be collected to answer the questions
The Software Engineering Institute
 US Defense Dept. funded institute associated
with Carnegie Mellon
 Mission is to promote software technology
transfer particularly to defense contractors
 Maturity model proposed in mid-1980s, refined
in early 1990s.
 Work has been very influential in process
improvement
The SEI process maturity model
Maturity model levels

 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
Key process areas
SEI model problems

 It focuses on project management rather than

product development.
 It ignores the use of technologies such as rapid
prototyping.
 It does not incorporate risk analysis as a key
process area
 It does not define its domain of applicability
The CMM and ISO 9000

 There is a clear correlation between the key processes

in the CMM and the quality management processes in
ISO 9000
 The CMM is more detailed and prescriptive and includes
a framework for improvement
 Organisations rated as level 2 in the CMM are likely to
be ISO 9000 compliant
Capability assessment

 An important role of the SEI is to use the CMM to assess

the capabilities of contractors bidding for US government
defence contracts
 The model is intended to represent organisational
capability not the practices used in particular projects
 Within the same organisation, there are often wide
variations in processes used
 Capability assessment is questionnaire-based
The capability assessment process
Process classification

 Informal
▪ No detailed process model. Development team chose their
own way of working
 Managed
▪ Defined process model which drives the development
process
 Methodical
▪ Processes supported by some development method such
as HOOD
 Supported
▪ Processes supported by automated CASE tools
Process applicability
Process choice

 Process used should depend on type of

product which is being developed
▪ For large systems, management is usually the principal problem
so you need a strictly managed process. For smaller systems,
more informality is possible.
 There is no uniformly applicable process which
should be standardised within an organisation
▪ High costs may be incurred if you force an inappropriate process
on a development team
Process tool support
 Key points

 Process improvement involves process analysis,

standardisation, measurement and change
 Process models include descriptions of tasks,
activities, roles, exceptions, communications,
deliverables and other processes
 Measurement should be used to answer specific
questions about the software process used
 The three types of process metrics which can be
collected are time metrics, resource utilisation metrics
and event metrics
Key points

 The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) model

classifies software processes as initial, repeatable,
defined, managed and optimising. It identifies key
processes which should be used at each of these
levels
 The SEI model is appropriate for large systems
developed by large teams of engineers. It cannot be
applied without modification in other situations
 Processes can be classified as informal, managed,
methodical and improving. This classification can be
used to identify process tool support