Software Development Process

One of the primary duties of the manager of a software development project is to ensure that all of the project activities follow a certain predefined process, that the activities are organized as a series of actions conducing to a desirable end . The activities are usually organized in distinct phases, and the process specifies what artifacts should be developed and delivered in each phase. For a software development team, conforming to a certain process means complying
with an appropriate order of actions or operations. For the project manager, the process provides means for control and guidance of the individual team members and the team as a whole, as it offers criteria for tracing and evaluation of the project's deliverables and activities.

Software development process encompasses many different tasks, such as domain analysis and development planning, requirements specification, software design, implementation and testing, as well as software maintenance. Hence it is no surprise at all that a number of software development processes exist. Generally, processes vary with the project’s goals (such as time to market, minimum cost, higher quality and customer satisfaction), available resources the company’s size, the number, knowledge, and experience of people both engineers and support personnel and hardware resources and application domain.

However, every software developer and manager should note that processes are very important. It is absolutely necessary to follow a certain predefined process in software development. It helps developers understand, evaluate, control, learn, communicate, improve, predict, and certify their work. Since processes vary with the project's size, goals, and resources, as well as the level at which they are applied the organization level, the team level, or the
individual level , it is always important to define, measure, analyze, assess,
compare, document, and change different processes.

There are several well-known examples of software development processes. Each process relies on a certain model of software development. The first wellestablished and well documented software development process has followed the waterfall model. The model assumes that the process of software development proceeds through several phases in a more-or-less linear manner. There is not much feedback and returning to previous phases other than the one directly preceding the phase in focus. In other words, once a certain phase is finished it is considered closed, and the work proceeds with the next phase. Many developers have criticized the waterfall model for its rigidity in that sense, and for its failure to comply with the reality of everchanging requirements and technology. However, the waterfall model is at least partially present in most of the other models as well, simply because of its natural order of phases in software development.