Software development Opportunities and Challenges

1. Software Development
Challenges & Opportunities
“You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going,
because you might not get there.”
Yogi Berra

2. Topics Covered in Presentation
Software Lifecycle – At a glance
Elements and Principles of Software
Development.
Software Development Activities
Challenges with Software Development
Problem solving Approach
Model driven development strategy
Risk vs Opportunity assessment
Software Development Lifecycle
Phases in development
Problems with the approach
Global and Legal Challenges
Opportunities in working with specific
approach.

3. • About
• Technology
• Client Base
• Services

4. Project analysis

Application for buying and selling
◦ Mobile application
◦ Search Adv.
◦ Post adv.
 Category
 Country
Analysis ?

5. Software Life Cycle
Software
construction goes through a
progression of states:
Conception
PreDevelopment
Childhood
Adulthood
Development
Retirement
PostDevelopment
5

6. Elements of Software
Development










User Requirements
Software Requirements: target systems,
languages
Architectural Design: target systems
Detailed Software Design: language, structure,
libraries
Implementation: languages, quality, version
control
Unit Testing
Integration Testing
System Testing
Deployment and Acceptance Testing
Maintenance: regression testing, quality control,
bug tracking, version control
6

7. Principles of System
Development

Get the system users involved.

Use a problem-solving approach.

Establish phases and activities.

Document through development.

Establish standards.

Manage the process and projects

Justify systems as capital investments.

Don’t be afraid to cancel or revise scope.

Divide and conquer.

Design systems for growth and change.
3-7

8. Possible Identification of Software Development
Activities
What is the problem?
What is the solution?
Requirements Analysis
System Design
Problem
Domain
Program Implementation
What are the mechanisms
that best implement the
solution?
Implementation
How is the solution
constructed?
Domain
Testing
Is the problem solved?
Program Design
Delivery
Can the customer use the solution?
Maintenance
Are enhancements needed?
8

9. Participants in Systems
Development
Who participates in the
system development life
cycle?

10. Inherent Challenges with Software
Development
Requirements are complex

◦
The client usually does not know all the functional requirements in advance
Requirements may be changing

◦
Technology enablers introduce new possibilities to deal with nonfunctional
requirements
Frequent changes are difficult to manage

◦
Identifying milestones and cost estimation is difficult
There is more than one software system

◦
New system must often be backward compatible with existing system
(―legacy system‖)
◦
Phased development: Need to distinguish between the system under
development and already released systems
10

11. Manage the Process and Projects
Process management –
 an ongoing activity that documents, manages,
oversees the use of, and improves an organization’s
chosen methodology (the ―process‖) for system
development. Process management is concerned
with phases, activities, deliverables, and quality
standards should be consistently applied to all
projects.
Project management
 is the process of scoping, planning, staffing,
organizing, directing, and controlling a project to
develop an information system at a minimum cost,
within a specified time frame, and with acceptable
quality.
311

12. Don’t Be Afraid to Cancel
or Revise Scope
Creeping commitment –
a strategy in which feasibility and risks are continuously reevaluated
throughout a project. Project budgets and deadlines are adjusted
accordingly.
Risk management –
the process of identifying, evaluating, and controlling what might go
wrong in a project before it becomes a threat to the successful
completion of the project or implementation of the information
system. Risk management is drive by risk analysis or assessment.
312

13. Where Do Systems Development
Projects Come From?

Problem –
◦ an undesirable situation that prevents the organization from fully
achieving its purpose, goals, and/or objectives.

Opportunity –
◦ a chance to improve the organization even in the absence of an
identified problem.

Directive –
◦ a new requirement that is imposed by management,
government, or some external influence.
313

14. Where Do Systems Development
Projects Come From?

Planned Projects
◦ An information systems strategy plan
 has examined the business as a whole to identify
those system development projects that will return
the greatest strategic (long-term) value to the
business
◦ A business process redesign
 has thoroughly analyzed a series of business
processes to eliminate redundancy and
bureaucracy and to improve efficiency and value
added. Not it is time to redesign the supporting
information system for those redesigned business
processes.
314

15. Use a Problem-Solving Approach
Classical Problem-solving approach
1. Study and understand the problem, its context,
and its impact.
2. Define the requirements that must be meet by any
solution.
3. Identify candidate solutions that fulfill the
requirements, and select the ―best‖ solution.
4. Design and/or implement the chosen solution.
5. Observe and evaluate the solution’s impact, and
refine the solution accordingly.
315

16. The PIECES Problem-Solving
Framework
P
the need to improve performance
I
the need to improve information (and
data)
E
the need to improve economics, control
costs, or increase profits
C
the need to improve control or security
E
the need to improve efficiency of people
and processes
S
the need to improve service to customers,
suppliers, partners, employees, etc.

17. Model-Driven Development Strategy

Model-driven development –
◦ a system development strategy that emphasizes the drawing of system models
to help visualize and analyze problems, define business requirements, and
design information systems.
◦ Process modeling – a process-centered technique popularized
by the structured analysis and design methodology that used
models of business process requirements to derive effective
software designs for a system.
◦ Data modeling – a data-centered technique used to model
business data requirements and design database systems that
fulfill those requirements.
◦ Object modeling – a technique that attempts to merge the data
and process concerns into singular constructs called objects.
Object models are diagrams that document a system in terms of
its objects and their interactions.
317

18. Logical vs. Physical Models
Logical model –
a pictorial representation that depicts what a
system is or does.
Physical model –
a technical pictorial representation that depicts
what a system is or does and how the system is
implemented.
318

19. Model-Driven Development
Strategy
Advantages
Requirements often
more thorough
 Easier to analyze
alternatives
 Design specifications
often more stable and
flexible
 Systems can be
constructed more
correctly the first time

Disadvantages
 Time consuming
 Models only as good
as users'
understanding of
requirements
 Reduces users' role
because pictures are
not software
 Can be Inflexible
319

20. RISK
Level
5
OPTIMIZED
Level
4
MANAGED
Level
3
DEFINED
Level
2
REPEATABLE
Level
1
INITIAL
COMPETITIVENESS

21. Opportunity

Principle 1:
◦

Principle 2:
◦

Establish Phases and Activities
Principle 4:
◦

Use a Problem-Solving Approach
Principle 3:
◦

Get the Owners and Users Involved
Justify Systems as Capital Investments
Principle 5:
◦
Don’t Be Afraid to Cancel or Revise Scope

22. The System Development Life Cycle
What are guidelines for system development?
Arrange tasks into phases (groups
of activities)
Involve users (anyone for whom
system is being built)
Develop clearly defined standards (procedures
company expects employees to follow)

23. What is a systems analyst?
Responsible for designing and
developing information system
Liaison between users and IT
professionals

24. What is the project team?
Formed to work on project from beginning to end
Consists of users, systems analyst, and other IT professionals
Project leader—one member of the team who
manages and controls project budget and
schedule

25. The System Development Life
Cycle
What are some reasons to create or modify an
information system?
To correct problem
in existing system
To improve
existing system
Outside group may
mandate change
Competition can
lead to change

26. What is the system proposal?
Assesses
feasibility
of each
alternative
solution
Recommen
ds the most
feasible
solution for
the project
Presented to
steering
committee,
which decides
how system will
be developed
Formal request for new or modified information
system Also called project request

27. Development Stages
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Analysis
Design
Implementation
Testing
Documentation
Evaluation
Maintenance

28. What is the analysis phase?
Conduct preliminary
investigation, also
called feasibility
study
Perform detailed
analysis
Read and understand the problem
 Interview client to be clear about the
problem
 Develop a software specification:

 Clear statement of problem
 Basis of legal agreement
 Agreed between analyst and client

29. Why & How

Play

30. Questioning

Write a program which calculates and
displays the average of a set of
numbers

Questions...?

31. Questioning
•
Write a program which calculates and
displays the average of a set of
numbers
•
Questions:
– How many numbers in set?
– What is maximum number?
– Are numbers integers, or real?
– What output device(s) to be used?

32. Inputs, Processes and Outputs

33. Inputs, Processes and Outputs

34. Inputs, Processes and Outputs

35. Feasibility Study
Operational
feasibility
Measure of
how suitable
system
development
will be to the
company
Four feasibility
tests:
Schedule
feasibility
Economic
feasibility
(also called
cost/benefit
feasibility)
Technical
feasibility

36. What is the planning phase?
Begins when steering committee receives project request
Steering
committee
decision-making
body for the
company
Function of committee:
Review and
approve project
requests
Prioritize
project requests
Allocate
resources
Form project
development
team for each
approved
project

37. What are possible solutions?
Buy packaged software—prewritten
software available for purchase
Write own custom software—software
developed at user’s request
Outsource—have outside source
develop software
Horizontal market
software—meets
needs of many
companies
Vertical market
software—designed
for particular industry

38. Logical Design Phase
Logical design –
◦ the translation of business user requirements into a system
model that depicts only the business requirements and not
any possible technical design or implementation of those
requirements. Common synonyms include conceptual
design and essential design.
System model –
◦ a picture of a system that represents reality or a desired
reality. System models facilitate improved communication
between system users, system analysts, system designers,
and system builders.
Analysis paralysis –
◦ a satirical term coined to describe a common project
condition in which excessive system modeling dramatically
slows progress toward implementation of the intended
system solution.

39. Physical Design & Integration
Phase
Physical design –
◦ the translation of business user requirements into a system
model that depicts a technical implementation of the users’
business requirements. Common synonyms include technical
design or implementation model.
Two extreme philosophies of physical design

Design by specification –
◦ physical system models and detailed specification are
produced as a series of written (or computer-generated)
blueprints for construction.

Design by prototyping –
◦ Incomplete but functioning applications or subsystems (called
prototypes) are constructed and refined based on feedback
from users and other designers.
339

40. Construction and Testing Phase

Construct and test system components
◦ Software
 Purchased
 Custom-built
◦
◦
◦
◦
Databases
User and System Interfaces
Hardware
Networks
340

41. Installation and Delivery Phase
Deliver the system into operation
(production)
 Deliver User training
 Deliver completed documentation
 Convert existing data

341

42. What is the support phase?

Provides ongoing
assistance after
system is
implemented

The ongoing
technical support
for users of a
system, as well as
the maintenance
required to deal
with any errors,
omissions, or new
requirements that
Conduct post-implementation
system review—meeting to find
out if information system is
performing according to
expectations
Identify errors
Identify enhancements
Monitor system performance

43. System Development Documentation, Repository, and Presentations
343

44. Challenges in the Development
Phases

Difficulty of accommodating change

One phase has to be complete before moving onto the next phase

Inflexible partitioning of the project into distinct stages makes it difficult to respond
to changing customer requirements.

Only appropriate when the requirements are well-understood and changes will be
fairly limited during the design process.

Few business systems have stable requirements.

Mostly used for large systems engineering projects where a system is developed
at several sites.

Not targeting all goals of Model-Driven Engineering

Using model transformations which are not fully executable

Not testing the model

Insufficient tooling
44

45. Software Industry Challenges
Costs
Up
Revenues
Down
Intervals
Shrinking
Market
Expectations
Up
Complexity
Up
Stockholders : ROI
Customers: Value
Users : Functionality & Quality
Need solutions that are
flexible, expansible, survivable,
sustainable, affordable and secure
2/21/2014
Seton Hall University

46. Legal challenges

Intellectual property rights—general
◦ Application and tools
 Can you reuse your component?
 Can you use it in a competitor’s application?
◦ Proprietary confidential information
 Library source code, proprietary tools, data, …
◦ Test suites and case studies
 Performance of partner applications or process
◦ Overlapping alliances and conflicts

47. Legal Challenges

Intellectual property rights
◦ Right to publish and disseminate
 Revealing experimental results
◦ Indirect intellectual property
 Insights developed in
collaborative process
 Process and practices

Whose law governs what?

48. Opportunities?

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







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Faster
More cost-effective
Leads to increased quality
less error-prone
leads to meaningful validation
results in software being less sensitive to changes in personnel
empowers domain experts
lets advanced programmers focus on the hard stuff
bridges the gap between business and IT
in software being less sensitive to changes in business
requirements
results in software being less sensitive to changes in technology
really enforces architecture
captures domain knowledge
provides up-to-date documentation
enables to focus on business problems instead of technology
provides you the ability to see your system at various levels

49. Our Learning's..
Development and maintenance processes our
software portfolio
 Establish good software development practices
 Capture/rescue important legacy software
 Improve the quality of our software base:

◦
◦
◦
◦
◦
◦
language conformance.
portability (over many platforms and architectures)
design and structure
testing
maintenance
improve software quality
Where possible use tools to automate, to make
the process easier and more measurable
 Ensure our developers adopt some good
practices and develop their own process of
improvement!

49

50. What do we learn?







Much of Best Practice is common sense – however
is it formalised common sense
The essence of Best Practice is in definition and
documentation
Software development should be managed like any
project
The Best Practice outlined is a framework in which
to work
The process steps have not been defined – these
are the remit of the project to defined, implement
and audit
There are some tools that can aid a process step
There is no magic bullet – software and
development process improvement is a long term
activity
50

51. Interact – with unknown

Play

52. Job portal
Candidate Registration
 Upload CV
 Upload documents
 Search CV


53. Questions ?
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