Overview

• The roadmap to building high quality software products is software process.
• Software processes are adapted to meet the needs of software engineers and managers as they undertake the development of a software product.
• A software process provides a framework for managing activities that can very easily get out of control.
• Different projects require different software processes.
• The software engineer's work products (programs, documentation, data) are produced as consequences of the activities defined by the software process.
• The best indicators of how well a software process has worked are the quality, timeliness, and long-term viability of the resulting software product.

Software Engineering

• Software engineering encompasses a process, management techniques, technical methods, and the use of tools.

Generic Software Engineering Phases

• Definition phase - focuses on what (information engineering, software project planning, requirements analysis).
• Development phase - focuses on how (software design, code generation, software testing).
• Support phase - focuses on change (corrective maintenance, adaptive maintenance, perfective maintenance, preventative maintenance).

Software Engineering Umbrella Activities

• Software project tracking and control
• Formal technical reviews
• Software quality assurance
• Software configuration management
• Document preparation and production
• Reusability management
• Measurement
• Risk management

Common Process Framework

• Software engineering work tasks
• Project milestones
• Work products
• Quality assurance points

Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM)

• Level 1: Initial (ad hoc software processes)
• Level 2: Repeatable (able to repeat earlier successes)
• Level 3: Defined (management and engineering processes documented, standardized, and integrated into organization-wide software process)
• Level 4; Managed (software process and products are quantitatively understood and controlled using detailed measures)
• Level 5: Optimizing (continuous process improvement is enabled by quantitative feedback from the process and testing innovative ideas)

Software Process Models

• Linear Sequential Model (old fashioned but reasonable approach when requirements are well understood)
• Prototyping Model (good first step when customer has a legitimate need, but is clueless about the details, developer needs to resist pressure to extend a rough prototype into a production product)
• Rapid Application and Development (RAD) Model (makes heavy use of reusable software components with an extremely short development cycle)
• Incremental Model (delivers software in small but usable pieces, each piece builds on pieces already delivered)
• Spiral Model (couples iterative nature of prototyping with the controlled and systematic aspects of the linear sequential model)
• Win-Win Spiral Model (eliciting software requirements defined through negotiation between customer and developer, where each party attempts to balance technical and business constraints)
• Concurrent Development Model (similar to spiral model often used in development of client/server applications)
• Component-Based Development (spiral model variation in which applications are built from prepackaged software components called classes)
• Formal Methods Model (rigorous mathematical notation used to specify, design, and verify computer-based systems)
• Fourth Generation (4GT) Techniques (software tool is used to generate the source code for a software system from a high level specification representation)