Software is?

• requirements specification documents
• design documents
• source code
• test suites and test plans
• interfaces to hardware and software operating environment
• internal and external documentation
• executable programs and their persistent data

Software effort

• Specification
• Product reviews
• Design
• Scheduling
• Feedback
• Competitive information acquisition
• Test planning
• Customer surveying
• Usability data gathering
• Look and feel specification
• Software architecture
• Programming

Customer requirements

• The software development team must determine what the customer wants.
• How can you do this?
• Guess?
• Collect detailed information from surveys?
• Get feedback from a previous version of the software?
• Read reviews in magazines?
• Get information about the competition?
• Other ways?
• The collected data is used to guide the specification effort.

Specification

• The specification takes the data from the customer requirements and other sources and defines:
  • The features of the software (functional requirements).
  • The constraints on these features (non-functional requirements).
• Specifications can be:
  • formal (e.g., aerospace industry), rigid
  • informal (e.g., a .com startup), on a cocktail napkin or a whiteboard.

Schedules

• The goals of scheduling are to know:
  • What work needs to be completed?
  • How much work is left to do?
  • When will the work be finished?
  • Who will finish each task?
  • Other measurable queries.
• A Gantt chart is a popular type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule

Design

Before coding begins on non-trivial software projects, a set of design documents are created to serve as blueprints.

• Software Architecture
• Data flow diagram
• State transition diagram
• Flowchart
• Commented code

Source code … of course

• The ultimate specification of the software!
• ‘Code is king’ philosophy is still prevalent.
• Many programming languages and tools to choose from.

Test documents

• Test plan
  • Quality objectives, resource needs, schedules, assignments, methods, etc.
• Test cases
  • Inputs and expected outputs.
• Bug reports
  • E.g., the Bugzilla web-based bug tracker.
• Test tools and automation
• Metrics, statistics, and summaries
  • Number of unresolved bugs, mean time to repair a bug, etc.

Software Project Staff

• Project managers
  • Write product specification, manage the schedule, critical decision tradeoffs
• Software architects, system engineers
  • Design the software, work closely with programmers
• Programmers, developers, coders
  • Write code, fix bugs
• Testers, quality assurance staff
  • Find bugs, document bugs, track progress of open bugs
• Technical writers
  • Write manuals, online documentation
• Configuration managers, builders
  • Packaging and code, documents, and specifications