This document provides an overview of various software engineering process models, including: - Waterfall model which divides the software development life cycle into sequential phases like requirements, design, implementation, testing and maintenance. - Iterative waterfall model which allows for feedback loops between phases to catch errors earlier. - Prototyping model which involves building prototypes to refine requirements before development. - Incremental/evolutionary model which develops the system in modules through successive versions. - Spiral model which represents the software process as iterative loops to progressively develop and test the product. - Agile models like Scrum and XP which emphasize adaptive planning, evolutionary development, team collaboration and frequent delivery of working software.

1. Software Engineering Principles
Ajit K Nayak, Ph.D.
ajitnayak@soauniversity.ac.in
9338749992
Lecture Notes – 2
Process Models

2. Why Study Software Engineering?
• To acquire skills to develop large programs.
– Exponential growth in complexity and difficulty level
with size.
– The ad hoc approach breaks down when size of
software increases.
• Ability to solve complex programming problems:
– How to break large projects into smaller and
manageable parts?
• Learn techniques of:
– specification, design, interface development,
testing, project management, etc.

3. Evolution of Design Techniques
Object-Oriented
Exploratory
Style
Data flow-based
Data structure-
based
Control flow-
based

4. Modern S/W Development Practices
• Use of Life Cycle Models
– Software is developed through several well-defined
stages:
• requirements analysis and specification,
• design,
• coding,
• testing, etc.
• Emphasis has shifted from error correction to error
prevention.
• Modern practices emphasize on detection of errors as
close to their point of introduction as possible.
• Unlike exploratory style, now coding is considered
only a small part of program development effort.

5. Software Life Cycle
• The life cycle of a software represents the series of
identifiable stages through which it evolves during its
life time
• Also called Software Development Life Cycle Model
(SDLC)

6. Classical Waterfall Model
• Classical waterfall model divides life cycle into phases:
Feasibility Study
Req. Analysis & Spec.
Design
Implementation
Testing
Maintenance
• It is simple and idealistic
model
• Hard to use for any non-
trivial SD project
• All other models are
extension to this model.

7. Relative Effort for Phases
• Phases between feasibility
study and testing known as
development phases.
• Among all life cycle phases
maintenance phase consumes
maximum effort.
• Among development phases,
testing phase consumes the
maximum effort.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Req.Sp
Design
Coding
Test
Maintnce

8. Feasibility Study
• Main aim of feasibility study is to determine whether
developing the product
– financially worthwhile
– technically feasible.
• First roughly understand what the customer wants:
– different data which would be input to the system,
– processing needed on these data,
– output data to be produced by the system,
– various constraints on the behavior of the system.

9. Activities during Feasibility Study
• Work out an overall understanding of the problem.
• Formulate different solution strategies.
• Examine alternate solution strategies in terms of:
– resources required,
– cost of development, and
– development time.
• Perform a cost/benefit analysis:
– To determine which solution is the best.
– None of the solutions may be feasible due to:
• high cost,
• resource constraints,
• technical reasons.

10. Requirements Analysis and Specification
• Aim of this phase:
– understand the exact requirements of the customer,
– document them properly.
• Consists of two distinct activities:
– requirements gathering and analysis
– requirements specification.

11. Requirements Analysis - I
• To Collect all related data from the customer:
– analyze the collected data to clearly understand
what the customer wants,
– find out any inconsistencies and incompleteness in
the requirements,
– resolve all inconsistencies and incompleteness.
• Usually collected from the end-users through
interviews and discussions.
• Example: business accounting software
– interview all the accountants of the organization to
find out their requirements

12. Requirements Analysis - II
• The data collected initially from the users:
– would usually contain several contradictions and
ambiguities:
– each user typically has only a partial and
incomplete view of the system.
• Ambiguities and contradictions must be identified,
resolved by discussions with the customers.
• Then, requirements are organized into a Software
Requirements Specification (SRS) document.
• Engineers doing requirements analysis and
specification are designated as analysts.

13. Design
• Design phase transforms requirements specification
into a form suitable for implementation in some
programming language.
• In technical terms:
– during design phase, software architecture is
derived from the SRS document.
• Two design approaches:
– traditional approach,
– object oriented approach.

14. Object Oriented Design
• First identify various objects (real world entities)
occurring in the problem:
• Example: the objects in a pay-roll software may be:
– employees, managers, pay-roll register,
Departments, etc.
• identify the relationships among the objects.
• OOD has several advantages:
– lower development effort,
– lower development time,
– better maintainability.

15. Implementation
• Implementation phase is also known as coding and
unit testing phase
– software design is translated into source code.
– each module of the design is coded,
– each module is unit tested
• tested independently as a stand alone unit, and debugged,
– each module is documented.
• The purpose of unit testing to test test if individual
modules work correctly.
• The end product of implementation phase
– a set of program modules that have been tested
individually.

16. Integration and System Testing
• Different modules are integrated in a planned manner
through a number of steps
• During each integration step, the partially integrated
system is tested.
• After all the modules have been successfully
integrated and tested:
– system testing is carried out.
• Goal of system testing:
– ensure that the developed system functions
according to its requirements as specified in the SRS
document.

17. Maintenance
• Maintenance of any software product requires much more
effort than the effort to develop the product itself.
• development effort to maintenance effort is typically
40:60.
• Corrective maintenance:
– Correct errors which were not discovered during the
product development phases.
• Perfective maintenance:
– Improve implementation of the system
– enhance functionalities of the system.
• Adaptive maintenance:
– Port software to a new environment,
– e.g. to a new computer or to a new operating system.

18. Limitations
• Classical waterfall model is idealistic
– assumes that no defect is introduced during any
development activity.
– in practice defects do get introduced in almost every
phase of the life cycle.
• Defects usually get detected much later in the life cycle
– For example, a design defect might go unnoticed till the
coding or testing phase.
• Once a defect is detected:
– we need to go back to the phase where it was
introduced
– redo some of the work done during that and all
subsequent phases.

19. Iterative Waterfall Model - I
Feasibility Study
Req. Analysis &
Specification
Design
Coding & Unit
test
Integration &
System Testing
Maintenance
There are feedback paths in
the Iterative waterfall
model

20. Iterative Waterfall Model - II
• Errors should be detected
– in the same phase in which they are introduced.
• For example:
– if a design problem is detected in the design phase
itself, then the problem can be taken care of much
more easily.
– if it is identified at the end of the integration and
system testing phase, then it would be difficult,
• because rework must be carried out not only to the design but
also to code and test phases

21. Iterative Waterfall Model - III
• The principle of detecting errors as close to its point
of introduction as possible is known as phase
containment of errors.
• Iterative waterfall model is by far the most widely
used model.
• Almost every other model is derived from the
waterfall model.
• Irrespective of the life cycle model actually followed
the documents should reflect a classical waterfall
model of development.

22. Use Waterfall models if…
• Project is large, expensive.
• Project has clear objectives and solution.
• Pressure does not exist for immediate
implementation.
• Project requirements can be stated unambiguously
and comprehensively.
• Project requirements are stable or unchanging during
the system development life cycle.
• User community is fully knowledgeable in the
business and application.
• Team members may be inexperienced.

23. Don’t Use these models when …
• Large projects where the requirements are not well
understood or are changing for any reasons such as
external changes, changing expectations, budget changes
or rapidly changing technology.
• Web Information Systems (WIS)
– primarily due to the pressure of implementing a WIS
project quickly;
– the continual evolution of the project requirements;
– the need for experienced, flexible team members drawn
from multiple disciplines; and
– the inability to make assumptions regarding the users’
knowledge level.
• Real-time systems.
• Event-driven systems.
• Leading-edge applications

24. V Model
• It is an extension to
iterative waterfall model
• Used in systems
requiring high reliability
Req. Analysis &
Specification
High-level Design
System Testing
Integration Testing
Unit Testing
Coding
Unit test design
System test design
Unit test design
• Two Phases
• Development
• Validation

25. V Model
• It is a variant of the Waterfall model
– emphasizes verification and validation
– Both V&V activities are spread over the entire life cycle.
• In every phase of development:
– Testing activities are planned in parallel with
development.
• Strengths
– Starting from early stages , it emphasize planning for
verification and validation of the software
– Each deliverable is made testable, easy to use
• Weaknesses
– Does not support overlapping of phases, does not
handle iterations or phases, does not easily handle later
changes in requirements

26. Prototyping Model - I
• Before starting actual development,
– a working prototype of the system should first be
built.
Requirements
Gathering
Quick
Design
Refine
Requirements
Build
Prototype
Customer
Evaluation of
Prototype
Design
Implement
Test
Maintain
Customer
satisfied
• A prototype is a toy implementation of a system:
– limited functional capabilities,
– low reliability,
– inefficient performance.

27. Why Prototyping Model?
• It is also a derivative of waterfall model
• To illustrate to the customer
– input data formats, messages, reports, or interactive
dialogs.
• Examine technical issues associated with product
development:
– Often major design decisions depend on issues like:
– response time of a hardware controller,
– efficiency of a sorting algorithm, etc.
• It is impossible to ``get it right'' the first time
– we must plan to throw away the first product if we
want to develop a good product.

28. Prototyping Model - II
• Start with approximate requirements.
• Carry out a quick design.
• Prototype model is built using several short-cuts:
– Short-cuts might involve using inefficient, inaccurate, or
dummy functions.
– A function may use a table look-up rather than
performing the actual computations.
• The developed prototype is submitted to the customer for
his evaluation:
– Based on the user feedback, requirements are refined.
– This cycle continues until the user approves the
prototype.
– The actual system is developed using the classical
waterfall approach.

29. Prototyping Model - III
• Requirements analysis and specification phase becomes
redundant:
– final working prototype (with all user feedbacks incorporated)
serves as an animated requirements specification.
• Design and code for the prototype is usually thrown away
– However, the experience gathered from developing the
prototype helps a great deal while developing the actual
product.
• Even though construction of a working prototype model
involves additional cost --- overall development cost might be
lower for:
– systems with unclear user requirements,
– systems with unresolved technical issues.
• Many user requirements get properly defined and technical
issues get resolved:
– these would have appeared later as change requests and
resulted in incurring massive redesign costs.

30. Major difficulties of Waterfall-Based
Models
• Difficulty in accommodating change requests during
development.
– 40% of requirements change during development
• High cost incurred in developing custom applications.
• Heavy weight processes.

31. Incremental Model
• Idea
– take advantage of what was being learned during
the development of earlier, incremental, deliverable
versions of the system.
– Learning comes from both the development and
use of the system…
– Start with a simple implementation of a subset of the
software requirements and iteratively enhance the
evolving sequence of versions.
– At each version design modifications are made
along with adding new functional capabilities.

32. Evolutionary Model - I
• In Evolutionary model (aka successive versions or
incremental model)
– The system is broken down into several modules
which can be incrementally implemented and
delivered.
• First develop the core modules of the system.
• The initial product skeleton is refined into increasing
levels of capability:
– by adding new functionalities in successive versions.
A
B
C
A A
B

33. Advantages / Disadvantages
• Users get a chance to experiment with a partially
developed system:
– much before the full working version is released,
• Helps finding exact user requirements:
– much before fully working system is developed.
• Core modules get tested thoroughly:
– reduces chances of errors in final product.
• Often, difficult to subdivide problems into functional units:
– which can be incrementally implemented and delivered.
• Evolutionary model is useful for very large problems,
– where it is easier to find modules for incremental
implementation.

34. Use
• Most Appropriate
– Large projects where requirements are not well
understood or are changing due to
– external changes, changing expectations, budget
changes or rapidly changing technology.
– Web Information Systems (WIS ) and event-driven
systems.
– Leading-edge applications.
• Least Appropriate
– Very small projects of very short duration.
– Integration and architectural risks are very low.
– Highly interactive applications where the data for the
project already exists (completely or in part), and the
project largely comprises analysis or reporting of the
data.

35. Rapid Application Development (RAD)
• Also known as Rapid Prototyping Model
• Clients do not know what they exactly wanted until they
saw a working system.
– In waterfall models, customer can’t see the S/W until the
development is complete in all respects.
• Working
– Functional modules are developed in parallel as
prototypes.
– Integrated to make the complete product for faster
product delivery.
– Follow iterative and incremental model.
– Prototypes developed are reusable.
• Reduces the communication gap between customers and
developers

36. RAD Model

37. Usability
• Suitable
– Customized product developed for one or two
customers only
– Performance and reliability are not critical.
– The system can be split into several independent
modules.
• Unsuitable
– Few plug-in components are available
– High performance or reliability required
– No precedence for similar products exists
– The system cannot be modularized.

38. Spiral Model
 Each loop of the spiral represents a phase of the software
process:
 the innermost loop might be concerned with system feasibility,
 the next loop with system requirements definition,
 the next one with system design, and so on.
(1)
Determine
Objectives
(2)
Identify &
Resolve Risks
(3)
Develop Next Level
of Product
(4)
Customer
Evaluation of
Prototype

39. 4 Quadrants - I
• Objective Setting (First Quadrant)
• Identify objectives of the phase
– Examine the risks associated with these objectives.
• Risk:
– any adverse circumstance that might hamper successful
completion of a software project.
• Find alternate solutions possible.
• Risk Assessment and Reduction (Second Quadrant)
• For each identified project risk
– a detailed analysis is carried out.
– Steps are taken to reduce the risk.
• Example: if there is a risk that the requirements are
inappropriate:
– a prototype system may be developed

40. 4 Quadrants - II
• Development and Validation (Third quadrant)
– develop and validate the next level of the product.
• Review and Planning (Fourth quadrant)
– review the results achieved so far with the
customer and plan the next iteration around the
spiral.
• With each iteration around the spiral
– progressively more complete version of the software
gets built.

41. Spiral Model as a meta model
• Subsumes all discussed models
– a single loop spiral represents waterfall model.
– iterations through the spiral are evolutionary levels.
– enables understanding and reacting to risks during
each iteration along the spiral.
– Uses prototyping as a risk reduction mechanism
– retains the step-wise approach of the waterfall
model.

42. Agile Development Models I
• Used to overcome the shortcomings of the waterfall
model of development.
– Proposed in mid-1990s
• The agile model was primarily designed to help a
project to adapt to change requests
• In this model, the requirements are decomposed into
many small incremental parts that can be developed
over, one to four weeks each.

43. Agile Development Models II
• Characteristics
– Quick project completion
– Makes the process light weight
• Removing activities not necessary to specific project.
• Removing anything that wastes time and effort.
– Emphasize face-to-face communication with the client,
with small team size may be working on-site.
– Emphasizes incremental release of working software.
– Deployment of pair-programming.
• Popular SDLC Models
– Extreme Programming (XP)
– Scrum
– Unified process
– Crystal
– DSDM
– Lean
– . . .

44. Agile Model: Principal Techniques
• User stories:
– Simpler than use cases.
• Metaphors:
– Based on user stories, developers propose a
common vision of what is required.
• Spike:
– A very simple program to explore potential solutions
should be considered.
• Refactor:
– Restructure code without affecting behavior,
improve efficiency, structure, etc.

45. Methodology
• Face-to-face communication favoured over written
documents.
• To facilitate face-to-face communication,
– development team to share a single office space.
– Team size is deliberately kept small (5-9 people)
– This makes the agile model most suited to the
development of small projects.
• At a time, only one increment is planned, developed,
deployed at the customer site.
– No long-term plans are made.
• An iteration may not add significant functionality,
– but still a new release is invariably made at the end of
each iteration
– Delivered to the customer for regular use.

46. Comparisons - I
• Waterfall Model
– steps through in a planned sequence over
– Progress is measured in terms of delivered artifacts
like Requirement specifications, design documents,
test plans, code reviews, etc.
• Agile model sequences delivery of working versions of
a product in several increments.
• Agile teams use the waterfall model on a small scale.

47. Comparisons - II
• RAD Model Vs Agile model
– RAD is based on designing quick-and-dirty
prototypes, which are then refined into production
quality code.
– Agile model does not recommend developing
prototypes
– Agile projects logically break down the solution into
a number of features:
• These are incrementally developed and delivered
– Systematic development of each incremental
feature is emphasized.

48. Comparisons - III
• Exploratory programming vs Agile Model
• Similarity
– Frequent re-evaluation of plans,
– Emphasis on face-to-face communication,
– Relatively sparse use of documents.
• Contrast
– Agile teams, however, do follow defined and
disciplined processes and carry out rigorous designs

49. Thank You
Acknowledgements
Dr. Rajib Mall, IIT, KGP