Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming,

documenting A document is a written, drawn, presented, or memorialized representation of thought, often the manifestation of non-fictional, as well as fictional, content. The word originates from the Latin ''Documentum'', which denotes a "teaching" or ...

testing An examination (exam or evaluation) or test is an educational assessment intended to measure a test-taker's knowledge, skill, aptitude, physical fitness, or classification in many other topics (e.g., beliefs). A test may be administered verba ...

, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications,

frameworks A framework is a generic term commonly referring to an essential supporting structure which other things are built on top of. Framework may refer to: Computing * Application framework, used to implement the structure of an application for an op ...

, or other software components. Software development involves writing and

maintaining ''Maintaining'' is a 2007-2009 comic strip by cartoonist Nate Creekmore. Creekmore is a two-time winner of the Scripps College Cartoonist of the Year and an Associated Press award for achievement in college cartooning. Creekmore's strip first app ...

the source code, but in a broader sense, it includes all processes from the conception of the desired software through to the final manifestation of the software, typically in a planned and structured process. Software development also includes research, new development, prototyping, modification, reuse, re-engineering, maintenance, or any other activities that result in software products.

Methodologies

One system development methodology is not necessarily suitable for use by all projects. Each of the available methodologies are best suited to specific kinds of projects, based on various technical, organizational, project, and team considerations.

Software development activities

Identification of need

The sources of ideas for software products are plentiful. These ideas can come from market research including the demographics of potential new customers, existing customers, sales prospects who rejected the product, other internal software development staff, or a creative third party. Ideas for software products are usually first evaluated by marketing personnel for economic feasibility, for fit with existing channels distribution, for possible effects on existing product lines, required

features Feature may refer to: Computing * Feature (CAD), could be a hole, pocket, or notch * Feature (computer vision), could be an edge, corner or blob * Feature (software design) is an intentional distinguishing characteristic of a software item ...

, and for fit with the company's marketing objectives. In a marketing evaluation phase, the cost and time assumptions become evaluated. A decision is reached early in the first phase as to whether, based on the more detailed information generated by the marketing and development staff, the project should be pursued further.Joseph M. Morris (2001). ''Software Industry Accounting''. p.1.10 In the book ''"Great Software Debates"'', Alan M. Davis states in the chapter ''"Requirements"'', sub-chapter ''"The Missing Piece of Software Development"''

Students of engineering learn engineering and are rarely exposed to finance or marketing. Students of marketing learn marketing and are rarely exposed to finance or engineering. Most of us become specialists in just one area. To complicate matters, few of us meet interdisciplinary people in the workforce, so there are few roles to mimic. Yet, software product planning is critical to the development success and absolutely requires knowledge of multiple disciplines.

Planning process

An important task in creating software is requirements analysis. Customers typically have an abstract idea of what they want as an end result but do not know what ''software'' should do. Skilled and experienced software engineers recognize incomplete, ambiguous, or even contradictory requirements at this point. Frequently demonstrating live code may help reduce the risk that the requirements are incorrect. "Although much effort is put in the requirements phase to ensure that requirements are complete and consistent, rarely that is the case; leaving the software design phase as the most influential one when it comes to minimizing the effects of new or changing requirements. Requirements volatility is challenging because they impact future or already going development efforts."

Software developer

A software developer is a person or company engaged in

software development process In software engineering, a software development process is a process of dividing software development work into smaller, parallel, or sequential steps or sub-processes to improve design, product management. It is also known as a software devel ...

, including research, design, programming, testing, and other facets of creating computer software. Other job titles for individuals with similar meanings include

programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

software analyst In a software development team, a software analyst is the person who monitors the software development process, performs configuration management, identifies safety, performance, and compliance issues, and prepares software requirements and spec ...

, or software engineer. Companies specializing in software may be called software houses. In a large company, there may be employees whose sole responsibility consists of only one of the disciplines. In smaller development environments, a few people or even a single individual might handle the complete process. Collaborative environments, such as open-source software, can bring together many developers.

Subtopics

View model

A view model is a framework that provides the viewpoints on the

system A system is a group of Interaction, interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment (systems), environment, is described by its boundaries, ...

and its

environment Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, all living and non-living things occurring naturally * Biophysical environment, the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism or ...

, to be used in the

. It is a graphical representation of the underlying semantics of a view. The purpose of viewpoints and views is to enable human engineers to comprehend very

complex system A complex system is a system composed of many components which may interact with each other. Examples of complex systems are Earth's global climate, organisms, the human brain, infrastructure such as power grid, transportation or communication ...

s and to organize the elements of the problem around domains of

expertise An expert is somebody who has a broad and deep understanding and competence in terms of knowledge, skill and experience through practice and education in a particular field. Informally, an expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable s ...

. In the engineering of physically intensive systems, viewpoints often correspond to capabilities and responsibilities within the engineering organization.Edward J. Barkmeyer ea (2003)
''Concepts for Automating Systems Integration''
NIST 2003.

Business process and data modelling

Graphical representation of the current state of information provides a very effective means for presenting information to both users and system developers. Process and data modeling

* A business model illustrates the functions associated with the business process being modeled and the organizations that perform these functions. By depicting activities and information flows, a foundation is created to visualize, define, understand, and validate the nature of a process. * A data model provides the details of information to be stored and is of primary use when the final product is the generation of computer software code for an application or the preparation of a functional specification to aid a computer software make-or-buy decision. See the figure on the right for an example of the interaction between business process and data models.Paul R. Smith & Richard Sarfaty (1993)
Creating a strategic plan for configuration management using Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools.
Paper For 1993 National DOE/Contractors and Facilities CAD/CAE User's Group. Usually, a model is created after conducting an interview, referred to as business analysis. The interview consists of a facilitator asking a series of questions designed to extract required information that describes a process. The interviewer is called a facilitator to emphasize that it is the participants who provide the information. The facilitator should have some knowledge of the process of interest, but this is not as important as having a structured methodology by which the questions are asked of the process expert. The methodology is important because usually a team of facilitators is collecting information across the facility and the results of the information from all the interviewers must fit together once completed. The models are developed as defining either the current state of the process, in which case the final product is called the "as-is" snapshot model, or a collection of ideas of what the process should contain, resulting in a "what-can-be" model. Generation of process and data models can be used to determine if the existing processes and information systems are sound and only need minor modifications or enhancements, or if re-engineering is required as a corrective action. The creation of business models is more than a way to view or automate your information process. Analysis can be used to fundamentally reshape the way your business or organization conducts its operations.

Computer-aided software engineering

Computer-aided software engineering (CASE), in the field software engineering, is the scientific application of a set of software tools and methods to the development of software which results in high-quality, defect-free, and maintainable software products. It also refers to methods for the development of information systems together with automated tools that can be used in the software development process. The term "computer-aided software engineering" (CASE) can refer to the software used for the automated development of systems software, i.e., computer code. The CASE functions include analysis, design, and programming. CASE tools automate methods for designing, documenting, and producing structured computer code in the desired programming language. Two key ideas of Computer-aided Software System Engineering (CASE) are: * Foster computer assistance in software development and

software maintenance Software maintenance in software engineering is the modification of a software product after delivery to correct faults, to improve performance or other attributes. A common perception of maintenance is that it merely involves fixing defects. H ...

processes, and * An engineering approach to software development and maintenance. Typical CASE tools exist for

configuration management Configuration management (CM) is a process for establishing and maintaining consistency of a product's performance, functional, and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life. The CM proc ...

data modeling Data modeling in software engineering is the process of creating a data model for an information system by applying certain formal techniques. Overview Data modeling is a process used to define and analyze data requirements needed to suppo ...

, model transformation, refactoring,

source code generation In computer science, the term automatic programming identifies a type of computer programming in which some mechanism generates a computer program to allow human programmers to write the code at a higher abstraction level. There has been little ...

Modeling language

A modeling language is any artificial language that can be used to express information or knowledge or

s in a

structure A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...

that is defined by a consistent set of rules. The rules are used for interpretation of the meaning of components in the structure. A modeling language can be graphical or textual.

Programming paradigm

A programming paradigm is a fundamental style of computer programming, which is not generally dictated by the project management methodology (such as waterfall or agile). Paradigms differ in the concepts and abstractions used to represent the elements of a program (such as objects, functions, variables, constraints) and the steps that comprise a computation (such as assignations, evaluation, continuations, data flows). Sometimes the concepts asserted by the paradigm are utilized cooperatively in high-level system architecture design; in other cases, the programming paradigm's scope is limited to the internal structure of a particular program or module. Example: Grady Booch's object-oriented design (OOD), also known as object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD). The Booch model includes six diagrams: class, object, state transition, interaction, module, and process.

References

External links

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