Software Engineering: (2)

Software Processes

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb

Assist. Professor of Computers Engineering
Tanta University, Tanta, Egypt
hassan.eldeeb@f-eng.tanta.edu.eg

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 1
Topics covered

✧ Software process models

✧ Process activities
✧ Coping with change

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 2
The software process
✧ A structured set of activities required to develop a
software system.
✧ Many different software processes but all involve:
▪ Specification – defining what the system should do;
▪ Design and implementation – defining the organization of the system and implementing the system;
▪ Validation – checking that it does what the customer wants;
▪ Evolution – changing the system in response to changing customer needs.
✧ A software process model is an abstract representation of a process. It presents a
description of a process from some particular perspective.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 3
 Software process descriptions

✧ When we describe and discuss processes, we usually talk about the

activities in these processes such as specifying a data model, designing a
user interface, etc. and the ordering of these activities.
✧ Process descriptions may also include:
▪ Products, which are the outcomes of a process activity;
▪ Roles, which reflect the responsibilities of the people involved in the process;
▪ Pre- and post-conditions, which are statements that are true before and after a
process activity has been enacted or a product produced.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 4
 Plan-driven and agile processes

✧ Plan-driven processes are processes where all of the process activities

are planned in advance and progress is measured against this plan.

✧ In agile processes, planning is incremental and it is easier to change the

process to reflect changing customer requirements.

✧ In practice, most practical processes include elements of both

plan-driven and agile approaches.

✧ There are no right or wrong software processes.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 5
 Software process models

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025
Software process models
✧ The waterfall model
▪ Plan-driven model. Separate and distinct phases of specification and development.

✧ Incremental development
▪ Specification, development and validation are interleaved. May be plan-driven or agile.

✧ Integration and configuration

▪ The system is assembled from existing configurable components. May be plan-driven or agile.

✧ In practice, most large systems are developed using a process that incorporates
elements from all of these models.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 7
The waterfall model

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025
Waterfall model phases
✧ There are separate identified phases in the waterfall model:
▪ Requirements analysis and definition
▪ System and software design
▪ Implementation and unit testing
▪ Integration and system testing
▪ Operation and maintenance

✧ The main drawback of the waterfall model is the difficulty of accommodating

change after the process is underway. In principle, a phase has to be complete
before moving onto the next phase.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 9
 Waterfall model problems
✧ Inflexible partitioning of the project into distinct stages makes it difficult
to respond to changing customer requirements.
▪ Therefore, this model is only appropriate when the requirements are
well-understood and changes will be fairly limited during the design process.
▪ Few business systems have stable requirements.
✧ The waterfall model is mostly used for large systems engineering
projects where a system is developed at several sites.
▪ In those circumstances, the plan-driven nature of the waterfall model helps
coordinate the work.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 10
Incremental development

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025
Incremental development benefits
✧ The cost of accommodating changing customer requirements is reduced.
▪ The amount of analysis and documentation that has to be redone is much less than is required with
the waterfall model.

✧ It is easier to get customer feedback on the development work that has been done.
▪ Customers can comment on demonstrations of the software and see how much has been
implemented.

✧ More rapid delivery and deployment of useful software to the customer is possible.
▪ Customers are able to use and gain value from the software earlier than is possible with a waterfall
process.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 12
 Incremental development problems

✧ The process is not visible.

▪ Managers need regular deliverables to measure progress. If systems are developed
quickly, it is not cost-effective to produce documents that reflect every version of the
system.

✧ System structure tends to degrade as new increments are added.

▪ Unless time and money is spent on refactoring to improve the software, regular
change tends to corrupt its structure. Incorporating further software changes
becomes increasingly difficult and costly.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 13
 Integration and configuration

✧ Based on software reuse where systems are integrated from existing

components or application systems (sometimes called COTS
-Commercial-off-the-shelf) systems).
✧ Reused elements may be configured to adapt their behaviour and
functionality to a user’s requirements
✧ Reuse is now the standard approach for building many types of business
system
▪ Reuse covered in more depth in Chapter 15.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 14
 Types of reusable software
✧ Stand-alone application systems (sometimes called COTS) that are
configured for use in a particular environment.
✧ Collections of objects that are developed as a package to be integrated
with a component framework such as .NET or J2EE.
✧ Web services that are developed according to service standards and
which are available for remote invocation.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 15
Reuse-oriented software engineering

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025
Key process stages

✧ Requirements specification
✧ Software discovery and evaluation
✧ Requirements refinement
✧ Application system configuration
✧ Component adaptation and integration

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 17
 Advantages and disadvantages

✧ Reduced costs and risks as less software is developed from scratch

✧ Faster delivery and deployment of system
✧ But requirements compromises are inevitable so system may not meet
real needs of users

✧ Loss of control over evolution of reused system elements

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 18
 Process activities

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025
 Process activities

✧ Real software processes are interleaved sequences of technical,

collaborative and managerial activities with the overall goal of
specifying, designing, implementing and testing a software system.
✧ The four basic process activities of specification, development, validation
and evolution are organized differently in different development
processes.
✧ For example, in the waterfall model, they are organized in sequence,
whereas in incremental development they are interleaved.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 20
The requirements engineering process

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025
 Software specification
✧ The process of establishing what services are required and the
constraints on the system’s operation and development.
✧ Requirements engineering process
▪ Requirements elicitation and analysis
• What do the system stakeholders require or expect from the system?
▪ Requirements specification
• Defining the requirements in detail
▪ Requirements validation
• Checking the validity of the requirements

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 22
 Software design and implementation
✧ The process of converting the system specification into an executable
system.
✧ Software design
▪ Design a software structure that realises the specification;
✧ Implementation
▪ Translate this structure into an executable program;
✧ The activities of design and implementation are closely related and may
be interleaved.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 23
A general model of the design process

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025
Design activities
✧ Architectural design, where you identify the overall structure of the system, the
principal components (subsystems or modules), their relationships and how they are
distributed.
✧ Database design, where you design the system data structures and how these are to
be represented in a database.
✧ Interface design, where you define the interfaces between system components.
✧ Component selection and design, where you search for reusable components. If
unavailable, you design how it will operate.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 25
 System implementation

✧ The software is implemented either by developing a program or

programs or by configuring an application system.

✧ Design and implementation are interleaved activities for most types of

software system.

✧ Programming is an individual activity with no standard process.

✧ Debugging is the activity of finding program faults and correcting these
faults.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 26
 Software validation
✧ Verification and validation (V & V) is intended to show that a system
conforms to its specification and meets the requirements of the system
customer.
✧ Involves checking and review processes and system testing.
✧ System testing involves executing the system with test cases that are
derived from the specification of the real data to be processed by the
system.
✧ Testing is the most commonly used V & V activity.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 27
Stages of testing

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025
Testing stages
✧ Component testing
▪ Individual components are tested independently;
▪ Components may be functions or objects or coherent groupings of these entities.
✧ System testing
▪ Testing of the system as a whole. Testing of emergent properties is particularly
important.
✧ Customer testing
▪ Testing with customer data to check that the system meets the customer’s needs.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 29
Testing phases in a plan-driven software process (V-model)

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 30
 Software evolution

✧ Software is inherently flexible and can change.

✧ As requirements change through changing business circumstances, the
software that supports the business must also evolve and change.

✧ Although there has been a demarcation between development and

evolution (maintenance) this is increasingly irrelevant as fewer and fewer
systems are completely new.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 31
System evolution

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025
 Coping with change

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025
 Coping with change

✧ Change is inevitable in all large software projects.

▪ Business changes lead to new and changed system requirements
▪ New technologies open up new possibilities for improving implementations
▪ Changing platforms require application changes

✧ Change leads to rework so the costs of change include both rework (e.g.
re-analysing requirements) as well as the costs of implementing new
functionality

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 34
Reducing the costs of rework
✧ Change anticipation, where the software process includes activities that can
anticipate possible changes before significant rework is required.
▪ For example, a prototype system may be developed to show some key features of the system to
customers.

✧ Change tolerance, where the process is designed so that changes can be

accommodated at relatively low cost.
▪ This normally involves some form of incremental development. Proposed changes may be
implemented in increments that have not yet been developed. If this is impossible, then only a
single increment (a small part of the system) may have be altered to incorporate the change.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 35
 Coping with changing requirements

✧ System prototyping, where a version of the system or part of the system

is developed quickly to check the customer’s requirements and the
feasibility of design decisions. This approach supports change
anticipation.

✧ Incremental delivery, where system increments are delivered to the

customer for comment and experimentation. This supports both change
avoidance and change tolerance.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 36
 Software prototyping

✧ A prototype is an initial version of a system used to demonstrate

concepts and try out design options.

✧ A prototype can be used in:

▪ The requirements engineering process to help with requirements elicitation and
validation;
▪ In design processes to explore options and develop a UI design;
▪ In the testing process to run back-to-back tests.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 37
 Benefits of prototyping

✧ Improved system usability.

✧ A closer match to users’ real needs.
✧ Improved design quality.
✧ Improved maintainability.
✧ Reduced development effort.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 38
The process of prototype development

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025
 Prototype development

✧ May be based on rapid prototyping languages or tools

✧ May involve leaving out functionality
▪ Prototype should focus on areas of the product that are not well-understood;
▪ Error checking and recovery may not be included in the prototype;
▪ Focus on functional rather than non-functional requirements such as reliability and
security

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 40
 Throw-away prototypes

✧ Prototypes should be discarded after development as they are not a

good basis for a production system:
▪ It may be impossible to tune the system to meet non-functional requirements;
▪ Prototypes are normally undocumented;
▪ The prototype structure is usually degraded through rapid change;
▪ The prototype probably will not meet normal organisational quality standards.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 41
 Incremental delivery

✧ Rather than deliver the system as a single delivery, the development and
delivery is broken down into increments with each increment delivering
part of the required functionality.

✧ User requirements are prioritised and the highest priority requirements

are included in early increments.

✧ Once the development of an increment is started, the requirements are

frozen though requirements for later increments can continue to evolve.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 42
Incremental development and delivery
✧ Incremental development
▪ Develop the system in increments and evaluate each increment before proceeding to the development of the
next increment;
▪ Normal approach used in agile methods;
▪ Evaluation done by user/customer proxy.
✧ Incremental delivery
▪ Deploy an increment for use by end-users;
▪ More realistic evaluation about practical use of software;
▪ Difficult to implement for replacement systems as increments have less functionality than the system being
replaced.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 43
Incremental delivery

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025
 Incremental delivery advantages

✧ Customer value can be delivered with each increment so system

functionality is available earlier.

✧ Early increments act as a prototype to help elicit requirements for later

increments.

✧ Lower risk of overall project failure.

✧ The highest priority system services tend to receive the most testing.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 45
 Incremental delivery problems
✧ Most systems require a set of basic facilities that are used by different
parts of the system.
▪ As requirements are not defined in detail until an increment is to be implemented, it
can be hard to identify common facilities that are needed by all increments.
✧ The essence of iterative processes is that the specification is developed
in conjunction with the software.
▪ However, this conflicts with the procurement model of many organizations, where
the complete system specification is part of the system development contract.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 46
 Bonus Content – Just for Your Knowledge
Process improvement

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025
Process improvement

✧ Many software companies have turned to software process improvement

Bonus Content – Just for Your Knowledge

as a way of enhancing the quality of their software, reducing costs or
accelerating their development processes.

✧ Process improvement means understanding existing processes and

changing these processes to increase product quality and/or reduce
costs and development time.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 48
Approaches to improvement
✧ The process maturity approach, which focuses on improving process and

Bonus Content – Just for Your Knowledge

project management and introducing good software engineering practice.
▪ The level of process maturity reflects the extent to which good technical and management
practice has been adopted in organizational software development processes.

✧ The agile approach, which focuses on iterative development and the reduction
of overheads in the software process.
▪ The primary characteristics of agile methods are rapid delivery of functionality and
responsiveness to changing customer requirements.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 49
The process improvement cycle

Bonus Content – Just for Your Knowledge

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025
Process improvement activities
✧ Process measurement

Bonus Content – Just for Your Knowledge

▪ You measure one or more attributes of the software process or product. These measurements forms
a baseline that helps you decide if process improvements have been effective.

✧ Process analysis
▪ The current process is assessed, and process weaknesses and bottlenecks are identified. Process
models (sometimes called process maps) that describe the process may be developed.

✧ Process change
▪ Process changes are proposed to address some of the identified process weaknesses. These are
introduced and the cycle resumes to collect data about the effectiveness of the changes.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 51
Process measurement
✧ Wherever possible, quantitative process data

Bonus Content – Just for Your Knowledge

should be collected
▪ However, where organisations do not have clearly defined process standards
this is very difficult as you don’t know what to measure. A process may have
to be defined before any measurement is possible.
✧ Process measurements should be used to
assess process improvements
▪ But this does not mean that measurements should drive the improvements.
The improvement driver should be the organizational objectives.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 52
 Process metrics

✧ Time taken for process activities to be

Bonus Content – Just for Your Knowledge

completed
▪ E.g. Calendar time or effort to complete an activity or process.

✧ Resources required for processes or activities

▪ E.g. Total effort in person-days.

✧ Number of occurrences of a particular event

▪ E.g. Number of defects discovered.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 53
Capability maturity levels

Bonus Content – Just for Your Knowledge

54

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025
The SEI capability maturity model
✧ Initial

Bonus Content – Just for Your Knowledge

▪ Essentially uncontrolled

✧ Repeatable
▪ Product management procedures defined and used

✧ Defined
▪ Process management procedures and strategies defined
and used

✧ Managed
▪ Quality management strategies defined and used

✧ Optimising
▪ Process improvement strategies defined and used

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 55
Key points
✧ Software processes are the activities involved in producing a software system.
Software process models are abstract representations of these processes.

✧ General process models describe the organization of software processes.

▪ Examples of these general models include the ‘waterfall’ model, incremental development,
and reuse-oriented development.

✧ Requirements engineering is the process of developing a software

specification.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 56
Key points
✧ Design and implementation processes are concerned with transforming a
requirements specification into an executable software system.
✧ Software validation is the process of checking that the system conforms to its
specification and that it meets the real needs of the users of the system.
✧ Software evolution takes place when you change existing software systems to
meet new requirements. The software must evolve to remain useful.
✧ Processes should include activities such as prototyping and incremental
delivery to cope with change.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 57
 Key points

✧ Processes may be structured for iterative development and delivery so

that changes may be made without disrupting the system as a whole.

✧ The principal approaches to process improvement are agile approaches,

geared to reducing process overheads, and maturity-based approaches
based on better process management and the use of good software
engineering practice.

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 58
Questions?!

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 59
 Stay in touch!

ha.eldeeb@gmail.com
@hassaneldeeb
@_HassanEldeeb_

Dr. Hassan Eldeeb Software Engineering: Software Processes Software Engineering - Feb, 2025 60