stand-alone programs that solve a specific business need.

Applications in this area process business or technical data in a way

that facilitates business operations or management/technical

decision making.

Engineering and scientific software have been characterized by "number

crunching" algorithms. Applications range from astronomy to volcanology,

from automotive stress analysis to space shuttle orbital dynamics, and from

molecular biology to automated manufacturing.

resides within a product or system and is used to implement and

control features and functions for the end user and for the system itself.

designed to provide a specific capability for use by many different customers.

called “WebApps,” this network-centric software category spans a

wide array of applications. In their simplest form, WebApps can be

little more than a set of linked hypertext files that present

information using text and limited graphics.

makes use of nonnumerical algorithms to solve complex problems that

are not amenable to computation or straightforward analysis. Applications

within this area include robotics, expert systems, pattern recognition

(image and voice), artificial neural networks, theorem proving, and game

playing.

is developed or engineered; it is not manufactured in the

classical sense.

is an engineering approach on a software

development of systematic application. It is a process of analyzing

user needs and designing, constructing, and testing end-user

applications that will satisfy these needs through the use of software

programming languages.

A Layered Technology:

A generic process framework for software

engineering encompasses five activities:

Managers with software responsibility, like managers in most disciplines, are often under pressure to maintain budgets, keep schedules from slipping, and improve quality.

A customer who requests computer software may be a

person at the next desk, a technical group down the hall,

the marketing/sales department, or an outside company

that has requested software under contract.

Myths that are still believed by software practitioners have

been fostered by 50 years of programming culture.

During the early days of software, programming was

viewed as an art form.

defined as a collection of work activities, actions, and

tasks that are performed when some work product is to be created.

Each of these activities, actions, and tasks reside within a framework

or model that defines their relationship with the process and with

one another. Referring to the figure, each framework

activity is populated by a set of software engineering

actions.

What process flow is this?

What process flow is this?

What process flow is this?

What process flow is this?

provide an effective mechanism for addressing problems

associated with any software process.

has proposed a template for describing a process pattern:

The pattern is given a meaningful name describing it within

the context of the software process (e.g., Technical Reviews).

The environment in which the pattern is encountered and the

issues that make the problem visible and may affect its solution.

The pattern type is specified.

defines a problem associated with a framework activity

for the process. Since a framework activity encompasses multiple actions

and work tasks, a stage pattern incorporates multiple task patterns (see

the following) that are relevant to the stage (framework activity).

defines a problem associated with a software

engineering action or work task and relevant to successful software

engineering practice (e.g., Requirements Gathering is a task pattern).

define the sequence of framework activities that occurs

within the process, even when the overall flow of activities is iterative in

nature. An example of a phase pattern might be Spiral Model or

Prototyping.

Describes the conditions under which the pattern applies.

Describes the conditions that will result once the

pattern has been successfully implemented.

Provide a list of all process patterns that are directly

related to this one. This may be represented as a hierarchy or in some

other diagrammatic form.

provides a five-step process assessment model that

incorporates five phases: initiating, diagnosing, establishing, acting, and

learning.

provides a diagnostic technique for assessing the relative maturity of a

software organization; uses the SEI CMM as the basis for the assessment

[Dun01].

a standard that defines a set of requirements for

software process assessment. The intent of the standard is to assist

organizations in developing an objective evaluation of the efficacy of any

defined software process.

a generic standard that applies to any

organization that wants to improve the overall quality of the products,

systems, or services that it provides. Therefore, the standard is directly

applicable to software organizations and companies.

sometimes called the classic life cycle, suggests a

systematic, sequential approach to software development that begins

with customer specification of requirements and progresses through

planning, modeling, construction, and deployment, culminating in ongoing

support of the completed software

depicts the relationship of quality assurance

actions to the actions associated with communication, modeling, and early

construction activities. As a software team moves down the left side of

the ___, basic problem requirements are refined into progressively more

detailed and technical representations of the problem and its solution.

combines elements of linear and parallel process

flows. applies linear sequences in a staggered fashion as

calendar time progresses.

They are characterized in a manner that

enables you to develop increasingly more complete versions of the

software. Often, a customer defines a set of general objectives for

software, but does not identify detailed requirements for functions and

features. In other cases, the developer may be unsure of the efficiency of

an algorithm, the adaptability of an operating system, or the form that

human-machine interaction should take.

Originally proposed by Barry Boehm [Boe88], the spiral model is an

evolutionary software process model that couples the iterative nature of

prototyping with the controlled and systematic aspects of the waterfall

model.

sometimes called concurrent

engineering, allows a software team to represent iterative and concurrent

elements of any of the process models described in this chapter. For

example, the modeling activity defined for the spiral model is

accomplished by invoking one or more of the following software

engineering actions: prototyping, analysis, and design.

leads to software reuse, and

reusability provides software engineers with a number of measurable

benefits. Your software engineering team can achieve a reduction in

development cycle time as well as a reduction in project cost if

component reuse becomes part of your culture

take on many of the characteristics of one or

more of the traditional models presented in the preceding sections.

However, these models tend to be applied when a specialized or narrowly

defined software engineering approach is chosen.

is an attempt to draw on the best features and

characteristics of traditional software process models, but characterize

them in a way that implements many of the best principles of agile

software development.

of the UP encompasses both customer

communication and planning activities. By collaborating with

stakeholders, business requirements for the software are identified; a

rough architecture for the system is proposed; and a plan for the iterative,

incremental nature of the ensuing project is developed.

encompasses the communication and modeling

activities of the generic process model. refines and expands the preliminary use cases that were

developed as part of the inception phase and expands the architectural

representation to include five different views of the software—the use

case model, the requirements model, the design model, the

implementation model, and the deployment model

of the UP is identical to the construction activity

defined for the generic software process. Using the architectural model as

input, the construction phase develops or acquires the software

components that will make each use case operational for end users. To

accomplish this, requirements and design models that were started during

the elaboration phase are completed to reflect the final version of the

software increment. All necessary and required features and functions for

the software increment (i.e., the release) are then implemented in source

code

the UP encompasses the latter stages of the

generic construction activity and the first part of the generic deployment

(delivery and feedback) activity. Software is given to end users for beta

testing and user feedback reports both defects and necessary changes

of the UP coincides with the deployment activity of

the generic process. During this phase, the ongoing use of the software is

monitored, support for the operating environment (infrastructure) is

provided, and defect reports and requests for changes are submitted and

evaluated.