Software development

Software development

1. Feasibility study

   • Done to see if a project is possible to accomplish, by testing key areas:
   • Legal
   • Ethical
   • Technical
   • Economic

2. Requirements specification

   • User specifies what the solution must achieve
   • Requirements elicitation
     • The process of determining the requirements
   • Some methods allow this to be changed via scope creep, aka feature creep

3. Methodologies

   • Waterfall
     • None-iterative
       • Can't 'go back' once a stage is completed
     • Has six stages (depending on which version you use)
       • Define requirements
         • Analysis
           • Design
             • Coding
               • Testing
                 • Maintenance
   • Agile
     • Similar to the waterfall method, however you can 'backstep' to any stage
       • You may also iterate this method
     • Incredibly flexible
       • Can be confusing to know what 'stage' you are at during development
   • Extreme Programming (XP)
     • A user becomes part of the development team
       • Who defines requirements by creating "user stories"
     • Iterative
       • Very short iterations (generally a week long)
     • No set 'stages', but a general consensus is:
       • 1) The 'planning game'
         • 2) Paired programming
           • 3) Complete section
             • 4) Move onto next section
               • 5) Repeat 2-4 until program finished
   • Spiral
     • Particularly useful in large projects where risk may be a key issue
     • 4 stages that iterate each time a new build of the project begins
       • 1) Determine objectives
         • 2) Identify and resolve risks
           • 3) Development and testing
             • 4) Plan the next iteration
       • Which makes the program continually improve with each iteration
     • Rather confusing for a novice to follow
   • Rapid Application Development
     • Iterative, high feature creep
     • Done via repeatedly creating improving prototypes and presenting them to the user.
       • When the user accepts the given prototype, it becomes the finished product.