SOFTWARE DESIGN METHODS AND REPRESENTATIONS - Software Design for Six-Sigma: A Roadmap for Excellence - page 78

section discusses the history of software design methods. In particular, an overview of
how software designs methods came to be, and how they have evolved since the late
1960s will be presented. The main design approaches by defining each design method
in detail and discussing the advantages and disadvantages of using each one also will
be presented. Comparing the different types of software design methodologies and as
well as discussing which methodologies may be best will be discussed. Finally, this
section will discuss the future of software design methods. The software development
field is a rapidly changing area of technology, as it seems that every decade or so
there is a shift in software design strategies. When compared with other engineering
disciplines, such as, for example, metallurgy, software engineering is a relatively new
field that was almost nonexistent until approximately 50 years ago.
Primitive types of software development started around the late 1940s and early
1950s, with the first stored-program computer, the Cambridge EDSAC. By the late
1960s, software had become part of many products. However, there was no real metric
to determine the quality of software, which led to many safety issues. This particular
situation became known as the software crisis . In response, software manufacturing
has to be based on the same types of foundations traditionally used in other types of
engineering. 1 During the early 1970s, structured design and software development
models evolved. Researchers started focusing on software design to develop more
complex software systems. In the 1980s and 1990s, software engineering shifted
toward software development processes.
Although object-oriented programming initially was developed around the late
1960s, this type of programming did not become especially popular until the late
1980s and 1990s (Barkan, 1992), (Urlocker, 1989). Object-orientation programming
can be traced back to the late 1960s with the development of Simula and Smalltalk,
which are types of object-oriented programming languages. However, object-oriented
programming did not become extremely popular until the mid-1990s, as the Internet
became more popular.
During the 1990s, object orientation also was modified with class responsibilities
collaborators (CRC) cards. Moreover, methods and modeling notations that came
out of the structured design movement were making their way into object-oriented
modeling. During this time, an integrated approach to design was becoming needed
in an effort to manage large-scale software systems and developed into the Unified
Modeling Language (UML). UML integrates modeling concepts and notations from
many methodologists. 2
UML is a widely used, generalized type of modeling language, and falls under
an object-oriented approach. The UML approach was started around the early to
mid-1990s and was developed by James Rumbaugh and Grady Booch of Rational
Software Corporation. 3 At that time, Rational was the source for the two most

1 “An Introduction to Software Architecture.” http://media.wiley.com/product data/excerpt/69/04712288/
0471228869.pdf.
2 “An Introduction to Software Architecture.” http://media.wiley.com/product data/excerpt/69/04712288/
0471228869.pdf.
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified Modeling Language.