Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Requirements
Software Product
Design
Coding
Te sting
Software Development
Process
Figure 1..1
Software development process and software product.
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Is any measured software development process better than the one that was
not measured?
How can anybody find out?
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the same produce software products or applications of the same quality?
What standards can be set to measure software development process quality?
Will two software development processes measured and found to be exactly
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Are the standards sufficient to make sure that the produced software will be
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of good quality?
Now let us find out answers to these questions.
Products are made using machines and product design. Machines are made
using machine design. Machine design is conceived and then implemented and the
machine is made (see
Figure 13.2).
Software is conceived and then developed using a software development pro-
cess. If the software development process is not sound, then most probably the
produced software will not be of good quality. On the other hand, if the software
development process can be said to be of good quality, then probably the produced
software will be of good quality.
Acknowledging this fact that a good software process will probably produce
a better-quality software product, let us see if we can measure quality of software
process. But before discussing measures and standards, we must know what is
involved in software development. So let us now discuss the steps involved in the
software development process.
We can identify that the software development process will have steps like
getting requirements, making software design out of these requirements, build-
ing software code as per design, and finally testing the built software to know
whether it is working as per requirements. We have seen earlier that making a
product requires the use of machines. In software product development, where is
