Software Development Life Cycle – MODIFIED WATERFALL

Many engineers recommend modified versions of the waterfall model. In the traditional waterfall model, the different stages of development are not allowed to overlap. One common type of modification allows some of the stages to overlap, which results in reduced documentation requirements and a reduced cost of returning to earlier stages to make changes. Another common modification is to incorporate prototyping into the requirements phases.

Overlapping stages, such as the requirements stage and the design stage, allow the development team to integrate feedback from the design phase into the requirements; but overlapping stages can make it difficult to know when you are finished with a given stage, as the line between stages becomes blurred. This makes progress harder track. Without distinct stages, problems can cause you to defer important decisions until later in the process when they are more expensive to correct.

Software Development Life Cycle – PROTOTYPING

One of the main problems with the waterfall model is that the requirements often are not completely understood in the early development stages. When you reach the future stages, you may discover that you need to adjust the requirements.

Prototyping can be useful in determining how a design meets a set of requirements. You can build a prototype, adjust the requirements, and revise the prototype several times, gaining an understanding of the project’s overall goals. In addition to clarifying the requirements, a prototype also defines many areas of the design at the same time.

The pure waterfall model allows for prototyping in later stages, but not in the early requirements stages.

Some drawbacks of prototyping:

Software Development Life Cycle – SPIRAL

The spiral model is an iterative model that attempts to combine advantages of the top-down and bottom-up models of software design. The goal is to reduce, as much as possible, an application’s time-to-market; in the traditional waterfall model, since each step must be completed before the next one starts, the time-to-market can be much longer.

The system requirements are defined in as much detail as possible. This usually involves interviewing a number of users representing all the external or internal users and other aspects of the existing system.

Software Development Life

Kovair's Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) provides a complete and total support for all SDLC activities and helps overcome the complexities in the total development process from initiation, analysis, design, implementation and maintenance to disposal. It also provides a structured and standardized process for all phases of any software development effort, thereby ensuring that all functional user requirements, and strategic goals and objectives are met.

Software national

With a national unemployment rate of 9.6 percent, many people assume employers have their pick of applicants for any job, McCombs said. Not so. Within every down job market exist bright spots, which in Chicago means tech jobs, particularly for software engineers.

The continued growth of the Internet and mobile technology is fueling the increased demand for IT professionals, McCombs said. Computer application software engineers will be the fastest growing job category over the next eight years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which projects a 32 percent increase in the number of computer software engineers between 2008 and 2018. The total work force is expected to grow 8 percent during the same period.

Software engineers hard to find

If you're looking for a career on the cutting edge, think about becoming a software engineer.

Skilled software engineers and Web developers are in such short supply in the Chicago area that Adam McCombs, chief executive of technology firm JumpForward, says finding qualified job candidates is "the bane of my existence."

Software Engineering: Art or Engineering.

The argument for treating software engineering as an art form is similar. Writing software could be considered art but only in the hands of truly brilliant software developers  and only when those truly brilliant software developers are in the zone, building something amazing. Everyone else is just writing code. Much like how no one would consider multiplication tables artistic, anyone who considers churning out code without intention or understanding of what is written as art is kidding themselves. Looking at software engineering from the perspective of eurhythmics lets us state this more as a fact than an opinion

Solid Modeling: Which Program is Best?

Parametric solid modeling programs such as UG, ProE, Ideas, SolidWorks, Solid Edge, Inventor, Alibre and others are here to stay. But, which one is the right one for your organization?

Parametric CAD programs began in the late '80s with Pro Engineer. They map component surfaces in such a way as to preserve the shape of the solid and allow "slicing", "milling", "boring", "extruding" and other manufacturing-type operations to be performed during the CAD drawing/design phase. They have revolutionized drafting into more of a design profession.

Project Management

Software engineering projects are frequently part of larger, more comprehensive projects that include equipment (hardware), facilities, personnel, and procedures, as well as software. Examples include aircraft systems, accounting systems, radar systems, inventory control systems, and railroad switching systems. These system engineering projects are typically managed by one or more system project managers (sometimes called program managers) who manage projects composed of engineers, experts in the field of the application, scientific specialists, programmers, support personnel, and others. If the software to be delivered is a “stand-alone” software system (a system that does not involve development of other nonsoftware components) the software engineering project manager may be called thesystem project manager.

Top-Down/ Bottom-Up Design

Top-down design directs designers to start with a top-level description of a system and then refine this view step by step. With each refinement, the system is decomposed into lower-level and smaller modules. Top-down decomposition requires identifying the major higher-level system requirements and functions, and then breaking them down in successive steps until function-specific modules can be designed. Thus, top-down design is a level-oriented design approach.

A Survey of Major Software Design Methodologies

A methodology can be simply defined as a set of procedure that one follows from the beginning to the completion of the software development process. The nature of the methodology is dependent on a number of factors, including the software development en vironment, the organization's practices, the nature or type of the software being developed, the requirements of the users, the qualification and training of the software development team, the available hardware and software resources, the availability o f existing design modules, and even the budget and the time schedule. Since the 1970s, there have been a proliferation of software design methodologies. Different methodologies have been developed to resolve different types of problems. In describing these problems, it is often possible or necessary to group problems with similar characteristics together. This is called the problem domain. Many of these methodologies have evolved from the specific milieu where the software was developed. By this it is meant that specific methodologies are often developed (to be applied) to resolve certain "classes" of problems, also called domain of application, for which it is well-suited. Even though the design mechanics are different in each methodology .