CLASSICAL WATERFALL MODEL
The classical waterfall model is intuitively the most obvious way to develop software. Though the classical waterfall model is elegant and intuitively obvious, it is not a practical model in the sense that it cannot be used in actual software development projects. Thus, this model can be considered to be a theoretical way of developing software. But all other life cycle models are essentially derived from the classical waterfall model. So, in order to be able to appreciate other life cycle models it is necessary to learn the classical waterfall model. Classical waterfall model divides the life cycle into the following phases as shown in fig
Feasibility study - The main aim of feasibility study is to determine whether it would be financially and technically feasible to develop the product.
1) At first project managers or team leaders try to have a rough understanding of what is required to be done by visiting the client side. They study different input data to the system and output data to be produced by the system. They study what kind of processing is needed to be done on these data and they look at the various constraints on the behavior of the system.
2) After they have an overall understanding of the problem they investigate the different solutions that are possible. Then they examine each of the solutions in terms of what kind of resources required, what would be the cost of development and what would be the development time for each solution.
3) Based on this analysis they pick the best solution and determine whether the solution is feasible financially and technically. They check whether the customer budget would meet the cost of the product and whether they have sufficient technical expertise in the area of development.
Requirements analysis and specification: - The aim of the requirements analysis and specification phase is to understand the exact requirements of the customer and to document them properly. This phase consists of two distinct activities, namely
Requirements gathering and analysis
Requirements specification
The goal of the requirements gathering activity is to collect all relevant information from the customer regarding the product to be developed. This is done to clearly understand the customer requirements so that incompleteness and inconsistencies are removed.
The requirements analysis activity is begun by collecting all relevant data regarding the product to be developed from the users of the product and from the customer through interviews and discussions.
For example : to perform the requirements analysis of a business accounting software required by an organization, the analyst might interview all the accountants of the organization to ascertain their requirements. The data collected from such a group of users usually contain several contradictions and ambiguities, since each user typically has only a partial and incomplete view of the system. Therefore it is necessary to identify all ambiguities and contradictions in the requirements and resolve them through further discussions with the customer. After all ambiguities, inconsistencies, and incompleteness have been resolved and all the requirements properly understood, the requirements specification activity can start. During this activity, the user requirements are systematically organized into a Software Requirements Specification (SRS) document. The customer requirements identified during the requirements gathering and analysis activity are organized into a SRS document. The important components of this document are functional requirements, the nonfunctional requirements, and the goals of implementation.
Design: - The goal of the design phase is to transform the requirements specified in the SRS document into a structure that is suitable for implementation in some programming language. In technical terms, during the design phase the software architecture is derived from the SRS document. Two distinctly different approaches are available: the traditional design approach and the object-oriented design approach.
Traditional design approach -Traditional design consists of two different activities; first a structured analysis of the requirements specification is carried out where the detailed structure of the problem is examined. This is followed by a structured design activity. During structured design, the results of structured analysis are transformed into the software design.
Object-oriented design approach -In this technique, various objects that occur in the problem domain and the solution domain are first identified, and the different relationships that exist among these objects are identified. The object structure is further refined to obtain the detailed design.
Coding and unit testing:- The purpose of the coding phase (sometimes called the implementation phase) of software development is to translate the software design into source code. Each component of the design is implemented as a program module. The end-product of this phase is a set of program modules that have been individually tested. During this phase, each module is unit tested to determine the correct working of all the individual modules. It involves testing each module in isolation as this is the most efficient way to debug the errors identified at this stage.
Integration and system testing: -Integration of different modules is undertaken once they have been coded and unit tested. During the integration and system testing phase, the modules are integrated in a planned manner. The different modules making up a software product are almost never integrated in one shot. Integration is normally carried out incrementally over a number of steps. During each integration step, the partially integrated system is tested and a set of previously planned modules are added to it. Finally, when all the modules have been successfully integrated and tested, system testing is carried out. The goal of system testing is to ensure that the developed system conforms to its requirements laid out in the SRS document. System testing usually consists of three different kinds of testing activities:
1) α – testing: It is the system testing performed by the development team.
2) β –testing: It is the system testing performed by a friendly set of customers.
3) Acceptance testing: It is the system testing performed by the customer himself after the product delivery to determine whether to accept or reject the delivered product.
System testing is normally carried out in a planned manner according to the system test plan document. The system test plan identifies all testing-related activities that must be performed,
specifies the schedule of testing, and allocates resources. It also lists all the test cases and the expected outputs for each test case.
Maintenance: -Maintenance of a typical software product requires much more than the effort necessary to develop the product itself. Many studies carried out in the past confirm this and indicate that the relative effort of development of a typical software product to its maintenance effort is roughly in the 40:60 ratios. Maintenance involves performing any one or more of the following three kinds of activities:
1) Correcting errors that were not discovered during the product development phase. This is called corrective maintenance.
2) Improving the implementation of the system, and enhancing the functionalities of the system according to the customer’s requirements. This is called perfective maintenance.
3)Porting the software to work in a new environment. For example, porting may be required to get the software to work on a new computer platform or with a new operating system. This is called adaptive maintenance.
Shortcomings of the classical waterfall model
The classical waterfall model is an idealistic one since it assumes that no development error is ever committed by the engineers during any of the life cycle phases. However, in practical development environments, the engineers do commit a large number of errors in almost every phase of the life cycle. The source of the defects can be many: oversight, wrong assumptions, use of inappropriate technology, communication gap among the project engineers, etc. These defects usually get detected much later in the life cycle. For example, a design defect might go unnoticed till we reach the coding or testing phase. Once a defect is detected, the engineers need to go back to the phase where the defect had occurred and redo some of the work done during that phase and the subsequent phases to correct the defect and its effect on the later phases. Therefore, in any practical software development work, it is not possible to strictly follow the classical waterfall model.
The classical waterfall model is intuitively the most obvious way to develop software. Though the classical waterfall model is elegant and intuitively obvious, it is not a practical model in the sense that it cannot be used in actual software development projects. Thus, this model can be considered to be a theoretical way of developing software. But all other life cycle models are essentially derived from the classical waterfall model. So, in order to be able to appreciate other life cycle models it is necessary to learn the classical waterfall model. Classical waterfall model divides the life cycle into the following phases as shown in fig
Feasibility study - The main aim of feasibility study is to determine whether it would be financially and technically feasible to develop the product.
1) At first project managers or team leaders try to have a rough understanding of what is required to be done by visiting the client side. They study different input data to the system and output data to be produced by the system. They study what kind of processing is needed to be done on these data and they look at the various constraints on the behavior of the system.
2) After they have an overall understanding of the problem they investigate the different solutions that are possible. Then they examine each of the solutions in terms of what kind of resources required, what would be the cost of development and what would be the development time for each solution.
3) Based on this analysis they pick the best solution and determine whether the solution is feasible financially and technically. They check whether the customer budget would meet the cost of the product and whether they have sufficient technical expertise in the area of development.
Requirements analysis and specification: - The aim of the requirements analysis and specification phase is to understand the exact requirements of the customer and to document them properly. This phase consists of two distinct activities, namely
Requirements gathering and analysis
Requirements specification
The goal of the requirements gathering activity is to collect all relevant information from the customer regarding the product to be developed. This is done to clearly understand the customer requirements so that incompleteness and inconsistencies are removed.
The requirements analysis activity is begun by collecting all relevant data regarding the product to be developed from the users of the product and from the customer through interviews and discussions.
For example : to perform the requirements analysis of a business accounting software required by an organization, the analyst might interview all the accountants of the organization to ascertain their requirements. The data collected from such a group of users usually contain several contradictions and ambiguities, since each user typically has only a partial and incomplete view of the system. Therefore it is necessary to identify all ambiguities and contradictions in the requirements and resolve them through further discussions with the customer. After all ambiguities, inconsistencies, and incompleteness have been resolved and all the requirements properly understood, the requirements specification activity can start. During this activity, the user requirements are systematically organized into a Software Requirements Specification (SRS) document. The customer requirements identified during the requirements gathering and analysis activity are organized into a SRS document. The important components of this document are functional requirements, the nonfunctional requirements, and the goals of implementation.
Design: - The goal of the design phase is to transform the requirements specified in the SRS document into a structure that is suitable for implementation in some programming language. In technical terms, during the design phase the software architecture is derived from the SRS document. Two distinctly different approaches are available: the traditional design approach and the object-oriented design approach.
Traditional design approach -Traditional design consists of two different activities; first a structured analysis of the requirements specification is carried out where the detailed structure of the problem is examined. This is followed by a structured design activity. During structured design, the results of structured analysis are transformed into the software design.
Object-oriented design approach -In this technique, various objects that occur in the problem domain and the solution domain are first identified, and the different relationships that exist among these objects are identified. The object structure is further refined to obtain the detailed design.
Coding and unit testing:- The purpose of the coding phase (sometimes called the implementation phase) of software development is to translate the software design into source code. Each component of the design is implemented as a program module. The end-product of this phase is a set of program modules that have been individually tested. During this phase, each module is unit tested to determine the correct working of all the individual modules. It involves testing each module in isolation as this is the most efficient way to debug the errors identified at this stage.
Integration and system testing: -Integration of different modules is undertaken once they have been coded and unit tested. During the integration and system testing phase, the modules are integrated in a planned manner. The different modules making up a software product are almost never integrated in one shot. Integration is normally carried out incrementally over a number of steps. During each integration step, the partially integrated system is tested and a set of previously planned modules are added to it. Finally, when all the modules have been successfully integrated and tested, system testing is carried out. The goal of system testing is to ensure that the developed system conforms to its requirements laid out in the SRS document. System testing usually consists of three different kinds of testing activities:
1) α – testing: It is the system testing performed by the development team.
2) β –testing: It is the system testing performed by a friendly set of customers.
3) Acceptance testing: It is the system testing performed by the customer himself after the product delivery to determine whether to accept or reject the delivered product.
System testing is normally carried out in a planned manner according to the system test plan document. The system test plan identifies all testing-related activities that must be performed,
specifies the schedule of testing, and allocates resources. It also lists all the test cases and the expected outputs for each test case.
Maintenance: -Maintenance of a typical software product requires much more than the effort necessary to develop the product itself. Many studies carried out in the past confirm this and indicate that the relative effort of development of a typical software product to its maintenance effort is roughly in the 40:60 ratios. Maintenance involves performing any one or more of the following three kinds of activities:
1) Correcting errors that were not discovered during the product development phase. This is called corrective maintenance.
2) Improving the implementation of the system, and enhancing the functionalities of the system according to the customer’s requirements. This is called perfective maintenance.
3)Porting the software to work in a new environment. For example, porting may be required to get the software to work on a new computer platform or with a new operating system. This is called adaptive maintenance.
Shortcomings of the classical waterfall model
The classical waterfall model is an idealistic one since it assumes that no development error is ever committed by the engineers during any of the life cycle phases. However, in practical development environments, the engineers do commit a large number of errors in almost every phase of the life cycle. The source of the defects can be many: oversight, wrong assumptions, use of inappropriate technology, communication gap among the project engineers, etc. These defects usually get detected much later in the life cycle. For example, a design defect might go unnoticed till we reach the coding or testing phase. Once a defect is detected, the engineers need to go back to the phase where the defect had occurred and redo some of the work done during that phase and the subsequent phases to correct the defect and its effect on the later phases. Therefore, in any practical software development work, it is not possible to strictly follow the classical waterfall model.
