Software Maintainability, SCM, CMS, and Development Factors
Maintainable Software
Maintainability is the ease with which software can be modified to fix defects, improve performance, or adapt to changes. High maintainability reduces long-term costs and effort.
Key Principles of Maintainable Software
- Modularity – Breaking software into independent, reusable modules.
- Readability & Understandability – Writing clear, well-documented code.
- Low Coupling & High Cohesion – Ensuring minimal dependency between modules while keeping related functions together.
Software Development Processes and Models
Plan-Driven and Agile Processes
- Plan-driven processes are processes where all activities are planned in advance, and progress is measured against this plan.
- In agile processes, planning is incremental, making it easier to change the process to reflect changing customer requirements.
- In practice, most processes include elements of both plan-driven and agile approaches.
- There are no right or wrong software processes.
Software Process Models
- Waterfall model
- Plan-driven model. Separate and distinct phases
Agile Methods in Software Development
Agile Methods
- Dissatisfaction with the overheads involved in software design methods of the 1980s and 1990s led to the creation of agile methods. These methods:
- Focus on the code rather than the design.
- Are based on an iterative approach to software development.
- Are intended to deliver working software quickly and evolve it rapidly to meet changing requirements.
- The aim of agile methods is to reduce overheads in the software process (e.g., by limiting documentation) and to be able to respond quickly
Software Development: Process and Modeling
Process Steps
- Requirement Analysis: Gathering information about what the customer needs and defining the problem that the product is expected to solve. The results of the analysis are typically captured in a formal requirements specification, which serves as input to the next step.
- Design: This involves defining the hardware and software architecture. The output of this stage is one or more design specifications, which are used in the next stage of implementation.
- Implementation: Constructing the product
Software Engineering: Challenges, UI Design, and SDLC Models
Software Engineering: Definition and Key Challenges
Software engineering is the application of engineering principles to design, develop, test, and maintain reliable, efficient, and scalable software systems.
Key Challenges in Software Engineering:
- Technology: Keeping up with rapid advancements.
- Scalability: Building software that grows with demand.
- Security: Protecting against vulnerabilities and cyberattacks.
- Requirement Changes: Adapting to evolving user needs.
- Complexity: Managing intricate systems
Intelligent Techniques & System Development Methodologies
Business Benefits of Intelligent Techniques for Knowledge Management
Artificial intelligence lacks the flexibility, breadth, and generality of human intelligence, but it can be used to capture, codify, and extend organizational knowledge. Expert systems capture tacit knowledge from a limited domain of human expertise and express that knowledge in the form of rules. Expert systems are most useful for problems of classification or diagnosis. Case-based reasoning represents organizational knowledge