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All about the processes involved in software development

Product Development - Rolling out the patch

Filed Under Patch, Issues, Development | Posted on September 28, 2008

The previous post had thoughts on what are some of the conditions under which a software patch is typically required. Once the decision has been made to make a patch, there are a set of activities that are needed to be done. A patch typically is a miniature version of a complete product development cycle, […]

Weakness of Function Point Analysis

Filed Under Problems, Estimation, Techniques, Issues, Process, Software | Posted on August 30, 2008

Function Point Analysis is seen as a very important and useful technique for requirements estimation, and for numerous other benefits (see previous post for more details). However, even such a famous method has its detractors, with a number of people / studies pointing out issues with the technique. Here are some of these issues / […]

An example of unrealistic expectations in the service industry

Filed Under Problems, Resources, Issues, Model, Development | Posted on July 29, 2008

This is a true example from around 6 years back when I was working for an IT software solutions provider (the firm did software projects for different customers). This was a decent sized company that had something like 12000 people on the rolls, doing everything from development to testing to requirements analysis, and so on. […]

User interface prototyping: Risks / Problems / Disadvantages

Filed Under Problems, Pitfalls, User, Interface, Prototyping, Issues | Posted on February 16, 2008

User Interface Prototyping is seen as a great value adder to the entire project; it helps to get better user input, show the final functionality to some extent, and determine short-comings. However, like any other process, it has its weaknesses and pitfalls and one needs to be careful in the prototyping process, and never lose […]

Problems with Extreme Programming

Filed Under Issues, Iterative, Model, Process, Development, Software | Posted on December 20, 2007

Chances are, when you are speaking to people about a software project and mention some development model, somebody will refer to Extreme Programming very enthusiastically and encourage you to try it, promising some incredible experiences. However, there are some issues with Extreme Programming, and it would be good if people reviewed these issues before going […]

Problems with Use Case Modeling

Filed Under Document, UML, Design, Techniques, Model, Issues, Software | Posted on October 22, 2007

There can be many problems in the approach of utilizing the Use Case Approach. You could have limitations of the actual process, or you can have people with not enough expertise in to do it, and messing up the whole thing. So, it is good to get an idea of the limitations of Use Case […]

Problems faced in the stage of Requirements Analysis

Filed Under Document, Requirements, Issues, SDLC, Development, Software | Posted on October 17, 2007

For a process that is so critical to the success of a software project, you would be surprised at the number of problems that can happen during the requirements gathering and analysis process. This must be the reason why Requirements Analysis is called the ‘make-or-break’ step of any project.
* Users don’t understand what they want […]

Why do so many software projects fail ?

Filed Under Improvement, Techniques, Issues, Process, Development, Software | Posted on September 3, 2007

Software development is a tough task, as evidenced by the fact that a lot of projects are known to fail for some reason or other. For a practitioner of software development, it is good to understood the reasons as to why software projects fail. This will help in trying to relate these reasons to their […]

Advantages and Disadvantages of White Box Testing

Filed Under Testing, Terms, Issues, Process, Development, Software | Posted on August 22, 2007

Advantages of White box testing are:
i) As the knowledge of internal coding structure is prerequisite, it becomes very easy to find out which type of input/data can help in testing the application effectively.
ii) The other advantage of white box testing is that it helps in optimizing the code
iii) It helps in removing the extra lines […]

What is blackbox testing ?

Filed Under Testing, Issues, Process, Development, Software | Posted on August 10, 2007

Blackboxes are the names used for the devices in planes that are expected to record the happenings in the plane and are useful if the plane crashes. However, the software blackbox is a different concept. It refers to the term of treating the software application as a box, of which you don’t know the internals […]


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