Chapter 2 – Software Processes

Topics covered

 Software process models

 Process activities
 Coping with change
 Process improvement
The software process

 A structured set of activities required to develop a

SW system.
 Many different SW 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 SW process model is an abstract representation of
a process. It presents a description of a process from
some particular perspective.
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.
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 SW processes.
Topics covered

 Software process models

 Process activities
 Coping with change
 Process improvement
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.
The waterfall model
Waterfall model phases

 There are separate identified phases in the waterfall

model:
 Requirements analysis and definition
 System and SW 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.
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.
Incremental development
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 SW and see
how much has been implemented.
 More rapid delivery and deployment of useful SW to the
customer is possible.
 Customers are able to use and gain value from the SW earlier
than is possible with a waterfall process.
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
SW, regular change tends to corrupt its structure. Incorporating
further SW changes becomes increasingly difficult and costly.
Integration and configuration

 Based on SW 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
behavior and functionality to a user’s requirements
 Reuse is now the standard approach for building many
types of business system
Types of reusable software

 Stand-alone application systems (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.
Reuse-oriented software engineering
Key process stages

 Requirements specification
 SW discovery and evaluation
 Requirements refinement
 Application system configuration
 Component adaptation and integration
Advantages and disadvantages

 Reduced costs and risks as less SW 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
Topics covered

 Software process models

 Process activities
 Coping with change
 Process improvement
Process activities

 Real SW processes are inter-leaved sequences of

technical, collaborative and managerial activities with
the overall goal of specifying, designing, implementing
and testing a SW 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.
The requirements engineering process
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
Software design and implementation

 The process of converting the system specification

into an executable system.
 SW design
 Design a SW 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.
A general model of the design process
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.
System implementation

 The SW 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 SW system.
 Programming is an individual activity with no standard
process.
 Debugging is the activity of finding program faults and
correcting these faults.
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.
Stages of testing
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.
Testing phases in a plan-driven software
process (V-model)
Software evolution

 SW is inherently flexible and can change.

 As requirements change through changing business
circumstances, the SW 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.
System evolution
Topics covered

 Software process models

 Process activities
 Coping with change
 Process improvement
Coping with change

 Change is inevitable in all large SW 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-analyzing requirements) as well as
the costs of implementing new functionality
Reducing the costs of rework

 Change anticipation, where the SW 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.
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.
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.
Benefits of prototyping

 Improved system usability.

 A closer match to users’ real needs.
 Improved design quality.
 Improved maintainability.
 Reduced development effort.
The process of prototype development
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
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 organizational
quality standards.
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 prioritized 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.
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 SW;
 Difficult to implement for replacement systems as increments
have less functionality than the system being replaced.
Incremental delivery
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.
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 SW.
 However, this conflicts with the procurement model of many
organizations, where the complete system specification is part of
the system development contract.
Topics covered

 Software process models

 Process activities
 Coping with change
 Process improvement
Process improvement

 Many SW companies have turned to SW process

improvement as a way of enhancing the quality of their
SW, 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.
 Approaches to improvement

 The process maturity approach, which focuses on

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

 Process measurement
 You measure one or more attributes of the SW 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.
Process measurement

 Wherever possible, quantitative process data

should be collected
 However, where organizations 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.
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.
Capability maturity levels
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
 Optimizing
 Process improvement strategies defined and used
Key points

 SW processes are the activities involved in producing a

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

 Design and implementation processes are concerned

with transforming a requirements specification into an
executable SW system.
 SW 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.
 SW evolution takes place when you change existing
SW systems to meet new requirements. The SW must
evolve to remain useful.
 Processes should include activities such as prototyping
and incremental delivery to cope with change.
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 SW
engineering practice.
 The SEI process maturity framework identifies maturity
levels that essentially correspond to the use of good
software engineering practice.