Software Development The Five Phases

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Software DevelopmentThe Five Phases

• Requirements analysis and definition
  (Specification)
• System and software design
• Implementation
• Integration and testing (Validation)
• Operation and maintenance (Evolution)

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Software DevelopmentThe Five Phases

• Requirements analysis and definition
  (Specification)
• System and software design
• Implementation
• Integration and testing (Validation)
• Operation and maintenance (Evolution)

3
Software specification

• The process of establishing what services are
  required and the constraints on the systems
  operation and development
• Requirements engineering process
• Feasibility study (Can we do it on time and
  effectively?)
• Requirements elicitation and analysis (What does
  it need to do?)
• Requirements specification (Write it all down.)
• Requirements validation (Does it all make
  sense?)

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Requirements Engineering
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Software DevelopmentThe Five Phases

• Requirements analysis and definition
  (Specification)
• System and software design
• Implementation
• Integration and testing (Validation)
• Operation and maintenance (Evolution)

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Software Design

• The process of converting the system
  specification into an executable system
• Software design
• Design a software structure that realizes the
  specification
• Implementation
• Translate design into an executable program
• Design and implementation are closely related and
  may be interleaved

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Design process activities

• Architectural design
• Abstract specification
• Interface design
• Component design
• Data structure design
• Algorithm design

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The Software Design Process
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Design methods

• Systematic approaches to developing a software
  design
• The design is usually documented as a set of
  graphical models
• Possible models
• Data-flow model
• Entity-relation-attribute model
• Structural model
• Object models

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Software DevelopmentThe Five Phases

• Requirements analysis and definition
  (Specification)
• System and software design
• Implementation
• Integration and testing (Validation)
• Operation and maintenance (Evolution)

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Implementation and debugging

• Translating a design into a program and removing
  errors from that program
• Programming is a personal activity - there is no
  generic programming process
• Programmers carry out some program testing to
  discover faults in the program and remove these
  faults in the debugging process

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Software DevelopmentThe Five Phases

• Requirements analysis and definition
  (Specification)
• System and software design
• Implementation
• Integration and testing (Validation)
• Operation and maintenance (Evolution)

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The testing process
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Testing stages

• Unit testing
• Individual components are tested
• Module testing
• Related collections of dependent components are
  tested
• Sub-system testing
• Modules are integrated into sub-systems and
  tested. The focus here should be on interface
  testing
• System testing
• Testing of the system as a whole. Testing of
  emergent properties
• Acceptance testing
• Testing with customer data to check that it is
  acceptable

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Testing phases
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Unit/Module Testing

• Smoke testing
• Light-weight test of each interface in a unit
  (module). Test that all components exist, not
  that they operate correction
• Black-box testing (a.k.a. functional testing)
• Test unit (module) strictly according to its
  specifications (interface description), not its
  implementation.
• White-box testing (a.k.a. structural testing)
• Testing using knowledge of implementation.
  Useful for exploring boundary cases. Often
  includes code inspection.

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Other mechanisms

• Other process mechanisms to improve quality
• Design reviews
• Wherein the design and specification (of your
  system) is subjected to peer review
• Can assist testing team (if distinct from
  design/programming team) in developing testing
  plans
• Code reviews
• Wherein the implementation is subjected to peer
  review
• Presentation forces programmers to justify
  decisions
• A surprisingly good way to find programming
  errors
• Can assist testing team in developing white-box
  tests

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Software DevelopmentThe Five Phases

• Requirements analysis and definition
  (Specification)
• System and software design
• Implementation
• Integration and testing (Validation)
• Operation and maintenance (Evolution)

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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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Software Evolution (cont)

• Need to revisit design and implementation
  decisions provide further justification for
  creation/maintenance of process documentation

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Automated process support (CASE)

• Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) is
  software to support software development and
  evolution processes
• Activity automation
• Graphical editors for system model development
• Data dictionary to manage design entities
• Graphical UI builder for user interface
  construction
• Debuggers to support program fault finding
• Automated translators to generate new versions of
  a program

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CASE technology

• Some improvements, but not as substantial as
  predicted
• Software engineering requires creative thought -
  this is not readily automatable
• Software engineering is a team activity and, for
  large projects, much time is spent in team
  interactions. CASE technology does not (yet)
  target group activities (groupware)