Approaches to software development

This free course, Approaches to software development, presents an engineering approach to the development of software systems – a software engineering approach. The course pays particular attention to issues of software quality, in terms of both product (what is built) and process (how we build it).

• Introduction
• Learning outcomes
• 1 Software and software engineering
• 1 Software and software engineering
• 1.1 What is a system?
• Definition
• Software systems
• Viewpoints
• System boundaries
• 1.2 The nature of software
• 1.3 Characteristics of a software system
• 1.4 Maintainability and other software problems
• Legacy systems
• Unsuccessful software systems
• 1.5 Divide and conquer?
• Problem and solution
• Modules and interfaces
• Abstraction
• Coupling and cohesion
• 1.6 Architecture
• Layers
• Components
• Services
• 1.7 Summary of Section 1
• 2 An introduction to software development
• 2 An introduction to software development
• 2.1 Software development as an engineering activity
• 2.2 The role of development processes
• Typical technical activities for the development of software
• An overall process model
• Agile development
• 2.3 Choosing an appropriate process
• Choosing the appropriate level of formality
• Dealing with risk
• 2.4 Traceability
• Project notebook
• 2.5 Summary of Section 2
• 3 Modelling in software development
• 3 Modelling in software development
• 3.1 Importance of modelling
• Agile modelling
• A standard notation
• 3.2 Models illustrate points of view
• 3.3 Introducing the Unified Process
• Views in the UP
• Agile UP
• 3.4 Activities and artefacts in the development process
• Domain modelling
• Requirements
• Analysis
• Design
• Implementation
• Testing
• Deployment
• 3.5 Summary of Section 3
• Conclusion
• References
• Acknowledgements