SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT:

1. Introduction

Computers are becoming a key element in our daily lives. Slowly and surely they are taking over many of the functions that effect our lives critically. They are now controlling all forms of monetary transactions, manufacturing, transportation, communication, defence systems, process control systems, and so on. In the near future, they will be found in our homes, controlling all forms of appliances. Left to themselves, they are harmless pieces of hardware. Load the right kind of software, they can take you to the moon, both literally and figuratively. It is the software that gives life to them.When they are going to play such a crucial role, one small flaw either in the hardware or the software can lead to catastrophic consequences. The sad part is, while there are well defined processes based on theoretical foundations to ensure the reliability of the hardware, same thing can not be said about software. There is no theory for software devlopment as yet. But at the same time, it is mandatory that software always behaves in a predictable manner, even in unforeseen circumstances. Hence there is a need to control its development through a well defined and systematic process. The old fashioned 'code & test' approach will not do any more. It may be good enough for 'toy' problems, but in real life, software is expected to solve enormously complex problems. Some of the aspects of real life software projects are:

Team effort: Any large development effort requires the services of a team of specialists. For example the team could consist of domain experts, software design experts, coding specialists, testing experts, hardware specialists, etc. Each group could concentrate on a specific aspect of the problem and design suitable solution. However no group can work in isolation. There will be constant interaction among team