Review on The Software Development Process

Embarking on the journey of software development entails navigating through a series of well-defined stages, collectively known as the software development life cycle. Each phase, from planning to maintenance, plays a vital role in shaping the final product. In this essay, we delve into the essence of process analysis, focusing on the intricacies of software development processes. Join me as we explore process analysis ideas to understand how software development projects evolve from conception to deployment.

Introduction

In software engineering, a software development process is a process of dividing software development work into distinct phases to improve a design, product management, and project management. It is also known as a software development life cycle. The methodology may include the pre-definition of specific deliverables and artifacts that are created and completed by a project team to develop or maintain an application. Most modern development processes can be vaguely described as agile. Other methodologies include a waterfall, prototyping, iterative and incremental development, spiral development, rapid application development, and extreme programming. Some people consider a life-cycle "model" a more general term for a category of methodologies and a software development "process" a more specific term to refer to a specific process chosen by a specific organization.

For example, there are many specific software development processes that fit the spiral life-cycle model. The field is often considered a subset of the systems development life cycle. Software Development Process The process of software development services goes through a series of stages in a stepwise fashion that almost every developing company follows.

Known as the ‘software development life cycle,’ these six steps include planning, analysis, design, development & implementation, testing & deployment, and maintenance.

1. 1. Planning: Without the perfect plan, calculating the strengths and weaknesses of the project, development of software is meaningless. Planning kicks off a project flawlessly and affects its progress positively.
2. 2. Analysis: This step is about analyzing the performance of the software at various stages and making notes on additional requirements. The analysis is very important to proceed further to the next step.
3. 3. Design: Once the analysis is complete, the step of designing takes over, which is basically building the architecture of the project. This step helps remove possible flaws by setting a standard and attempting to stick to it.
4. 4. Development & Implementation: The actual task of developing the software starts here with data recording going on in the background. Once the software is developed, the stage of implementation comes in where the product goes through a pilot study to see if it’s functioning properly.
5. 5. Testing: The testing stage assesses the software for errors and documents bugs if there are any.
6. 6. Maintenance: Once the software passes through all the stages without any issues, it is to undergo a maintenance process wherein it will be maintained and upgraded from time to time to adapt to changes. Almost every software development company follows all the six steps.

Dealing with changing requirements customers change their minds. The competitive landscape shifts. A new and better technology goes live. There are tons of reasons why you need flexibility in your requirements, instead of trudging forward with a plan that could lead to budget waste and obsolete technology at launch. Customer input happens throughout the development process. Gains customer and stakeholder feedback on features sooner rather than later. Improves scope control because stakeholders can add new requirements, shift priorities, or rethink requirements on a feature or architectural level.

Gives project teams the room to take risks and innovate based on customer feedback without sacrificing too much time or budget because agile teams can pivot on requirements as needed. Product backlog sets development priorities. Managing or grooming the product backlog can be an art unto itself. In some organizations, the scrum master manages the backlog. Other organizations might choose to have product managers or cross-functional team leaders involved in managing it. Either way, it’s a far more open affair because everyone from the whole team to stakeholders to customers might have input into the backlog’s priorities.

Daily meetings promote communications Holding daily meetings, or stand-ups, are another tool for managing changing requirements. These meetings take place at the same time each day and give team members a chance to talk about the tasks they’ve completed and any obstacles standing in their way. A properly managed daily meeting lets developers, team leads and stakeholders (if invited) to share information. Some of that information could be issues and feedback about product requirements that might arise during the implementation process. The impact of changing requirements on the project schedule can be discussed immediately and open for input by management and team members. Task boards make developer tasks and details visibleProduct requirements documents are too often read once and left in an email inbox for the duration of the project. Agile development uses the concept of a task board to divide up tasks into multiple columns and make them visible 24/7. These boards parcel out projects into the following stages: To doIn progress, testingDoneTasks boards help manage changing requirements because of the visibility they offer, which include: Project requirement status is visible to every team member.

Dependencies of project requirements impacted by changing requirements are clear.S hows threaded comments about the changing requirements before and during sprints from the developer and other team members. User stories and sprints orchestrate change. A product owner creates a story. Developers can build a new application feature based on the story. During or after the sprint where that feature is built, a salesperson delivers feedback from a customer that shows the feature is missing a critical functionality.

The product owner can create a new story to build out the feature with the missing functionality during the next sprint. Managing change is part of project work changing requirements will always dog development teams. The agile development gives project teams the platform, culture, and tools to manage changing requirements effectively so they can deliver products and services that meet or exceed their customers’ expectations. This is a big part of business success! Use of rapid prototyping is the best option if possible. So this will help customers feel sure of their requirements and minimize changes. To minimize the effort of regression testing later first prepare for risk analysis of changes. If possible then new requirements should move to the next Phase of the application. Stick to original requirements in the current Phase. Spend adequate time to think of probable changes in the initial stages of the project. Make sure that the code is well documented and commented as well. For developers, this helps to make the code changes easily.

Prepare for requirements traceability matrix that would help to trace what all test case needs to update if the specific requirement is changed. Creating automated testing in such a way that if changes in requirement then expected effort is minimum to deal with new changes. The generic level test plan should be prepared & more flexible test case should be designed (it is not simple to design flexible test cases). Minimize detailed test cases writing, you can go with high-level test cases if the requirement changes continuously. Understand risk involved in ad-hoc testing let’s focus less on comprehensive test plans and test cases. Automation test scripts should be created more flexible & adaptive in nature. First, concentrate on automation testing piece that probably remains unchanged after a change in requirements. Make sure that management and client understand the cost, schedules & impact of changes in requirement and they are acceptable with the changes. If the same issue still exists then figure out why these requirements are not aligned with realism. You have to refactor the software development process followed in your organization.

So follow Agile Development process might be the GOOD option to go with because it allows you change in requirements in late in Software Development process as well, it is intended for that. Also, the end user or customer involvement is on all stages, so the customer is aware of what is implementing & if they want to changes in requirement or add new requirement then it can be easily accommodated.