Managing Software Developement

The Four Verbs of Software Development and Capability Maturity

Dr. James E. Tomayko

Objective:

At the conclusion of this lesson:
  1. The student shall understand the origins of software and its special nature that drives the development process.
  2. The student shall know the strengths and weaknesses of the waterfall, rapid prototyping, incremental, evolutionary, and spiral software development life cycle models.
  3. The student shall know the early notions of software process as reflected in organizations and life cycle models.
  4. The student shall understand the concept of the Capability Maturity Model.

Activity One: How Software Came to Be

Watch the Just-in-Time lecture The History of Software. Is software a candidate for engineering, or no?

Activity Two: The Waterfall Software Development Life Cycle

Read Thayer88, pp. 118-141 and answer the following:
  1. What does the Waterfall life cycle assume about the status of each step when moving to the next step?
  2. What is the normal course of events when the Waterfall model is used?
  3. What is needed to complete a step?

Activity Three: The Four Verbs of Software Development

Study the sharts of the Waterfall Model, the Rapid Prototyping Model, the Iterative Model, and the Evolutionary Model. What four activities are common to each?

Activity Four: The Capability Maturity Model

In addition to development models, there are process management models for software. One of the most famous is initially described in Humphrey88. Read it and explain how the model can serve as a guide to practice and process improvement.

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