What is a life cycle model?

Framework under which a software product is

going to be developed.
Defines the phases that the product under
development will go through.
Identifies activities involved in each of the phases
and their respective deliverables.

Efforts of various stakeholders from industry

and academia.
A successful model: adopted by the software
industry and has undergone many
modifications and enhancements to improve
its efficiency and applicability.

Pre-development activities
Prior to embarking into the activities
and the phases of the software life
cycle development model, there are
some pre-development activities
and deliverables that must be
performed to enable the proper
startup of the software development
project.

Predevelopment activities
Extent of the pre-development
activities depend on the complexity
and type of software to develop.
For a software system to be
implemented as a part of a complete
system including software, hardware
and people, the allocation of functions
to the software component of the
system and the interactions and
boundaries between the software and
other system elements must be clearly

What is a life cycle model?

An ideal life cycle model is generic,
flexible, adaptable and scalable.
To be tailored to suit the particular
needs of the company and its
development team.
flexible to allow different emphasis on
different phases, activities and
deliverables

Must scale up to large and complex

software systems development

What is a life cycle model?

Many industrial-strength and popular
models have been used to develop
software products of different
complexities and in a wide variety of
application domains.
waterfall or system development
life cycle model, the prototyping
model, the spiral model, the objectoriented model, the incremental and
iterative model, the extreme model,
and the component based model.

Software maintenance
activities

Software maintenance activities include:

the management of software improvement requests,

the identification, categorization and prioritization of
needed improvements, and
the scheduling and execution of the needed
improvements.

The management of requests is facilitated using

a user friendly system for requesting software
improvements and reporting software faults.
This system is used by software users, software
developers and the client to report software
faults and to request enhancements to the
software.
Requests and error reports are then analyzed by
the maintenance team.
The scheduling of the execution of requests
depends mainly on their complexity and urgency.

Types of maintenance
activities

Corrective maintenance activities

are triggered by software faults
encountered during the use of the
software. They involve simple fixes like
cosmetic changes to the user
interface, or more complex fixes like
redesign of a module or the reintroduction of a missing functionality.
Preventive maintenance activities
involve dealing with weaknesses and
vulnerabilities identified by the

Software maintenance
activities

Perfective maintenance activities

involve dealing with requests to
improve the efficiency of the
algorithms and data structures, and
user interface interactions used in the
design.
Adaptive maintenance activities
involve requests from software
stakeholders to adapt the software to
different operating environments, user
interface styles, social contexts, or

Ongoing (umbrella)
activities

Project management
Quality assurance
Evaluation and testing
Configuration management
Technical support
Internal training
Documentation
Operations support and user training

Project management
Project manager continuously performs project
management related activities.
Progress of the activities is closely monitored
using an appropriate reporting procedure.
Risks are continuously monitored and
corrective actions are taken when needed.
New risks are identified and monitored.
The project schedule is updated regularly if
needed.
Project and process related metrics are
regularly collected.
Regular human resource management and

Quality assurance
During and at the end of each phase, QA group
reviews the phase deliverables and ensures the
use of and conformance to internal and external
standards.
Reviews of parts of the deliverables are
conducted during the phase execution and after
the deliverables are produced.
Quality reports and logs are maintained and
relevant metrics are collected according to the
metrics collection plan.
The quality assurance plan is executed and
updated if needed.

Evaluation and testing

Validation and verification activities
At the end of each phase, deliverables are
evaluated and tested.
Once deliverables are approved, the next
phase will start.

Formal and informal processes can be

used for evaluation and testing
purposes.
performed by the developers and by
independent groups like the QA group.

Informal evaluation processes include

reviews

Evaluation and testing (2)

Formal evaluation processes include
the use of formal techniques and
automated tools for the verification of
phase deliverables.
Tools and techniques for design
verification and code testing can be
used for these purposes.
Formal product validation techniques
can also be used to generate and
document effective tests, to automate
the validation process and to analyze

Configuration management
CM deals mainly with the management of the software
resources and the overall support and control of the
software development and maintenance processes.
CM activities include:
the identification of all software documents,
deliverables and artifacts that will be produced,
manipulated and maintained during the
development and maintenance of the software.
CM control activities include revision and version
control, process and workflow control, build control
and change control.
Performed using an integrated and automated
configuration management tool for revision,
version, build and change management.

Technical support and internal

training
Developers may require some technical
support and training.
Support technicians help the developers in
solving technical problems that may arise
while developing the software.
These activities help improve the efficiency
and productivity of the development and
maintenance teams.
A training plan can be devised as part of a
project plan to deal with the training of
technical staff on the development process,

Documentation
Documents targeting different audiences are
produced.
internal and technical documents that are
needed for future software maintenance
activities.
documents target external users and
include user, installation and operations
manuals.
Standards and standard templates are
used to guide the writing of these software
related documents.
Technical writers are normally involved
with the production of the external

Operations support and user

training
After installing the software, its
operations is supported by providing
customer help desk support, technical
assistance, user training and consulting.
Help desk request logs and fault report
logs are maintained and appropriate
metrics are generated.
Fault reports are used to trigger the
appropriate maintenance and process
improvement activities.

Prototyped waterfall model

Allows visualization of requirements

Find out requirements errors earlier
Better quality user interface
Interactive with client / user
Easy and quick to build prototype
Prototype to throw away do not use it to
continue building the software
Use programming language other than the
one to be used to develop the software
Visual Basic

Object oriented model

Object-oriented
Analysis Identification of problem domain
objects, object attributes and methods
(operations), object relationships: aggregation
(composition), inheritance and communication,
scenarios using sequences of interactions
Design solution domain classes and
interrelationships, entity, interface and control
classes.
Implementation use Java, C++, C#

Use the Unified Modeling Language (UML)

Incremental and iterative

model
Prioritizing requirements
Identify requirements for different
releases
Use a model to develop each release

Spiral model
Introduced by Barry Boehm in 1988.
Model addresses the weaknesses of the
waterfall model with respect to the
treatment of software development
risks.

Model embeds risk management

activities within the development
activities.
Software risks and the lack of a clear
and continuous risk management
strategy are the main reason for
software project failures.

Spiral model (2)

Each cycle in the spiral model involves
the repeated execution of 4 steps at
each phase
Identification of objectives, alternatives
and constraints that are relevant at that
phase
Evaluation and assessment of the
alternatives with respect to constraints and
identified potential risks
Develop the phase deliverable by
performing its activities, followed by a
review of these deliverables.
Preparation and planning for the following

Rational unified process

(RUP)

Process management tool encapsulating

best practices in software development and
maintenance:
iterative and incremental development of
software, requirements management,
software components reuse, visual
modeling, software quality verification,
and configuration and change
management.
RUP is a configurable product
can be adapted to software products of
different types and complexities.

[you can use the original drawing from the web]

Inception phase
Team develops business context and project scope
of the project.
Product stakeholders are indentified and their
interfaces with the software to develop are
determined.
All use cases are identified and partly developed
and prototyped. A risk management plan, and cost
and schedule estimations are developed.
Deliverables include a vision and scope document,
an initial use case model, an initial project plan
including a risk management plan and an initial
prototype.
Financial and technical feasibilities of the project

Elaboration phase
Use case model is formalized and an
executable prototype of the most complex
and critical use cases is implemented.
Deliverables include a use case model, nonfunctional requirements specifications, a
revised and complete project plan including
revised risk management plan and more
accurate estimates of cost and time needed
to complete the project, and an executable
prototype.
Inception and elaboration phases of RUP
correspond to the software requirements

Construction phase
Software is designed, implemented and
integrated prior to its deployment in the
transition phase.
Various software releases may be
constructed concurrently to accelerate the
deployment of high priority features of the
software product.
Deliverables include the software design
document, the software product and all
related documentation including
installation and user manuals.

Transition phase
Software product is deployed and made
available for use by its intended user
population.
The product is validated against the
requirements.
Necessary database conversions are
performed.
Training of software users and operators is
provided.
Product is distributed to its intended users
using the appropriate distribution channels.

RUP activities
RUP can also be described by its activities that
are clustered into different workflows.
Each workflow culminates in one or more
deliverable.
9 workflows are identified:
business modeling, requirements, analysis and
design, implementation, test, deployment, project
management, configuration and change
management, and environment.

Activities of one workflow may span more than

1 phase.
Project management, change / configuration

Software development and

maintenance teams
Possible team structures
Functional
Project
Hybrid functional / project

Each has its advantages and

disadvantages

Software engineering
standards

Capability maturity model

(CMM)

CMM was developed by W. Humphrey at the SEI at

CMU for the assessment of the development
processes at software development companies.
CMM Integration (CMMI) assists in the assessment
of the process maturity in areas like systems
engineering, project management, and supplychain management.
CMM does not recommend any particular set of
mature processes to be followed by an organization.
CMM can be used to assess the maturity of existing
processes. The basis for the placement at a
particular level is based on the availability of specific
process areas defined for that level.
As a result of the process maturity assessment, an

Unified Modeling Language

(UML)
Joint efforts by object-oriented
methodologists
De facto standard language for
software modeling
Visual language for modeling software
systems from many aspects and views
Modeling software structure, behavior
and architecture