Software development is the practice of organising the design and construction of software, the beating heart of much technology fundamental to our personal and professional life. This free introductory course, An introduction to software development, discusses the engineering nature of software development, its challenges and some fundamental practices which have developed to meet them. Software development is a fast-moving discipline and as a software development professional you must be able to track its leading edge. The course also teaches you some fundamental skills to help you interact with the growing published academic and professional literature on the subject.
software development is a complicated process. It requires careful
planning and execution to meet the goals. Sometimes a developer
must react quickly and aggressively to meet everchanging market
demands. Maintaining software quality hinders fast-paced software development, as many testing cycles are necessary to ensure quality products.
This chapter provides an introduction to the software development process. As you will learn, there are many stages of any software development project. A commercial software product is usually derived from
market demands. Sales and marketing people have first-hand knowledge
of their customers’ requirements. Based upon these market requirements,
senior software developers create an architecture for the products along
with functional and design specifications. Then the development process
starts. After the initial development phase, software testing begins, and
many times it is done in parallel with the development process. Documentation is also part of the development process because a product cannot be
brought to market without manuals. Once development and testing are
done, the software is released and the support cycle begins. This phase
may include bug fixes and new releases.
After reading this chapter, you should understand how software development is done and the components of a software development system. At
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