Chapter 3 - Methodology

Incremental or Evolutionary and Throwaway

2 Types of Prototyping

Project

A collection of related tasks that must be completed in a particular order and within a certain time-frame to achieve a specific goal. Also, it is composed of related tasks that take place on one or more activity threads or paths.

The Time-Frame

A project's _________ is finite

Analysis Phase

Analyzing the requirements to build a conceptual model of the solution (the product).

Creating the solution, understanding the problem, organizing the production, assuring quality, and the managing the consequences of the solution.

Challenges of Methodology

Requirements Planning, Design, Implementation, and Enhancements and Maintenance

Characteristics of Rapid Application Development (RAD)

The Scope

Defines the project's boundaries of the goal

Ad Hoc Approach

Development without an overall theoretical framework, and it is a high-risk approach.

Feasibility Study

Discovers the meaning of requirements within the context, concepts within the domain that are related to the problem and can affect the solution, and possibly the consequences of the solution on the problem domain. It aims to discover whether the expectations are realistic.

How the real world is seen, how software is defined, the process of development, and the modeling language.

Factors that shape Software Modeling

Solution Domain

In building a solution, we also create a new and distinct context called the ___________

Hierarchical methodology

It is composed of sub-methodologies which, in turn, might consist of other methodologies.

Inflexibility, Over-Reliance on Documentation, and Detachment from Technology, Marketplace, and profession

Limitations of the Waterfall Model

Initial (or ad-hoc), Repeatable, Defined, Managed, and Optimizing.

Maturity Levels of CMM

Project management tools

Primarily focused on modeling the components and the flow of the project from various perspectives and with different levels of detail. For example, Gantt Charts, PERT Charts, WBS, etc.

Unbalanced Architecture, Illusion of Completeness, Diminishing Changeability, and can result in too little documentation or, more importantly, too little modeling.

Problems with Prototyping

Rapid Application Development (RAD)

Selecting techniques, methods, practices and procedures that would result faster development and shorter schedules.

Methodology

Set of methods, rules, practices, procedures, techniques and tools used to achieve a goal, or the theoretical understating of the principles that determine how such methods, practices, tools, etc., are used. Also, it is both the most abstract and the most systematic guide to action. It evolves from the above but cannot be reduced to any of them.

Milestones

Significant events in the life of the project.

Requirements Gathering, Feasibility Study, Domain Analysis, Analysis, Design, Implementation, Testing & Quality Control, Deployment & Training, and Maintenance

Software Development Methodologies address

Maintenance

Solving problems that may emerge after the deployment of the software, or changes in the environment.

Project Manager

The job of the ________ depends on how "management" is defined.

Complexity

The primary source behind the emergence or the change of methodology.

Problem Domain

The problem that is to be solved, or the need that is to be satisfied exists in a context. This context is called a ____________

Incremental, Evolutionary, Iterative Prototyping

The product is built through successive versions that are refined and expanded with each iteration until it becomes the final product. It addresses these concepts: Initialization Step, Control List, and Iteration Step

Throwaway Prototyping

The prototype is discarded after the stakeholders in the development are confident that they have arrived at the correct specifications and the development on the "real" product can start.

Deliverables

The verifiable results of tasks.

Deployment and Training

This activity consists of ensuring the correct installation on the target platform, user training, creating help files and user manuals, setting up of Web sites to guide users, packaging, etc

Requirements Gathering

This activity determines the requirements that the product must address.

Agile Methodologies

This aims at being adaptive rather than predictive. For example, Extreme Programming (XP), which used the set of clear-cut practices that are categorized as the following: Planning, Designing, Coding, and Testing

Capability Maturity Model (CMM)

This aims to measure the maturity of software development process within an organization, and it is essentially a rating and auditing framework of standards.

The Goal

This aspect of the project must be verifiable

Risk management

This guards against the unexpected risks.

The Life-cycle

This identifies the phases of the project from its inception to its completion

System Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

This methodology view software development as primarily a project management process rather than a technical one. Each phase is a "milestone" and the resulting documents are the "deliverables."

Object-Oriented Development

This requires: an object-oriented technology, object-oriented analysis and design, and a project plan adapted to an object-oriented approach. Also, it is mature and rules the market. Its software development is iterative.

Waterfall Model

This specifies a set of sequential phases for software development. Each step cannot begin until the previous step has been completed and documented. It is document-driven. Design is conceived as processes and data, not as objects.

Design Phase

Transforms the "what" into "how." It consists of several distinct activities; logical design, physical design, and architectural design.

Implementation

Turns the blueprints of design into an actual product. Programming is usually the most important component of this activity, but it is not the only one.

Testing and Quality Control

Verifies that the product functions according to specifications.

Project Plan and Software Development

__________ is sequential in concept. __________ is iterative in practice.

Spiral Model

risk-oriented life-cycle model that breaks a software project up into mini-projects.

Prototyping

the creation of a working model of the essential features of the final product for testing and verification of requirements.

Modeling as a methodology

the systematic representation of the relevant features of a product or a system from particular perspectives.