Successful Software Development Project

Software Modeling -- Trimming the Trivial Far From Models of Development

Streamlining the steps of software modeling as well as the steps needed to operate the system itself seems essential in the generation of any adequate software development project timetable in today's competitive marketplace. In other words, a programmer usually wants to cut out all unnecessary parts of creating a viable model and see that model enacted as quickly as possible in the real world, cutting straight to the 'chase' or the apparent heart of the software's development lifecycle, namely the implementation phase. It is here where the excitement really lies, rather than simply in the theoretical and architectural testing conducted in the programmer's workshop.

Furthermore, the pace of the business world and its financial demands tend to place a premium on speed and alacrity of development rather than upon careful, measured and well-tested consideration of all alternatives. Yet to produce an adequate project in the real world, a developer must be completely aware of the workplace and systems demands of the software project first, before he or she heedlessly embarks upon a project design. A "key ingredient that contributes to a reliable programming systems product is the assurance that the program will perform satisfactorily in terms of its functional and nonfunctional specifications within the expected deployment environments. In a typical commercial development organization, the cost of providing this assurance via appropriate debugging, testing, and verification activities can easily range from 50 to 75% of the total development cost." (Halipern & Santhanam, 2001)

Project models of development such as the waterfall model, which force programmers to constantly go back and check their work for errors or potential encroachments are supposed to act as cautions to overly zealous designers who are anxious to see their work in action, and overly cost-conscious management personnel. The waterfall software model of development demands that the designer constantly goes back and checks his or her work, eliminating possible systems impingements from the outside, and making sure that the system addresses the needs and demands of the design. Although this going back may be frustrating, "there is a big difference between an isolated program created by a lone programmer and a programming systems product." A programming systems product "can be run, tested, repaired, and extended by anybody ... In many operating environments, for many sets of data" and forms a part of "a collection of interacting programs, coordinated in function and disciplined in format, so that the assemblage constitutes an entire facility for large tasks." (Halipern & Santhanam, 2001) The vastness of the tasks demanded of most new systems today means the system is subject to a wide range of misuses and potential unforeseen errors -- thus, perhaps no element of the life cycle model can be dismissed as truly trivial, only that for some products some aspects of the life cycle are less necessary than others.

For instance, testing and verification "assumptions are often unstated and are frequently unmet in real-world environments. How often has a new version of a piece of software failed because of some unplanned-for device driver, or some competing piece of software that grabs control of an interrupt?" (Halipern & Santhanam, 2001) But even when implementation may be more satisfying and more predictable from the point-of-view of the programmer, this does not discount the importance of even imperfect testing and verification, despite the incomplete data gleaned from this part of the process.