Problem Analysis and The Software Development Process
When problem analysis is incorporated into the software development process, the software development lifecycle starts with the problem analyst, who studies the situation and:
- creates a context diagram
- gathers a list of requirements and adds a requirements oval to the context diagram, creating a grand "all-in-one" problem diagram. (However, in many cases actually creating an all-in-one problem diagram may be impractical or unhelpful: there will be too many requirements references criss-crossing the diagram to make it very useful.)
- decomposes the all-in-one problem and problem diagram into simpler problems and simpler problem diagrams. These problems are projections, not subsets, of the all-in-one diagram.
- continues to decompose problems until each problem is simple enough that it can be seen to be an instance of a recognized problem frame. Each subproblem description includes a description of the specification interfaces for the machine to be built.
At this point, problem analysis — problem decomposition — is complete. The next step is to reverse the process and to build the desired software system though a process of solution composition.
The solution composition process is not yet well-understood, and is still very much a research topic. Extrapolating from hints in Software Requirements & Specifications, we can guess that the software development process would continue with the developers, who would:
- compose the multiple subproblem machine specifications into the specification for a single all-in-one machine: a specification for a software machine that satisfies all of the customer's requirements. This is a non-trivial activity — the composition process may very well raise composition problems that need to be solved.
- implement the all-in-one machine by going through the traditional code/test/deploy process.
Read more about this topic: Problem Frames Approach
Famous quotes containing the words problem, analysis, development and/or process:
“The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of life—this much we can stand. But the real problem is that government is boring. We could cure or mitigate the other ills Washington visits on us if we could only bring ourselves to pay attention to Washington itself. But we cannot.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“Whatever else American thinkers do, they psychologize, often brilliantly. The trouble is that psychology only takes us so far. The new interest in families has its merits, but it will have done us all a disservice if it turns us away from public issues to private matters. A vision of things that has no room for the inner life is bankrupt, but a psychology without social analysis or politics is both powerless and very lonely.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“The highest form of development is to govern one’s self.”
—Zerelda G. Wallace (1817–1901)
“My advice to people today is as follows: If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.”
—Timothy Leary (b. 1920)