Software Development: A Product Life-Cycle Perspective

Abstract

This paper describes the complete cycle of the development of a software product in the commercial software industry. This development cycle includes three major categories. These categories are pre-development, development, and post-development activities. By carefully studying the commercial development cycle, deficiencies in the way the Air Force and the DOD develop software can be identified. Although several of the ideas described in this process doe not directly relate to development in a non-commercial world, most do relate in some form or fashion. Although marketing, in the true sense, is not done in a non-commercial world, it is necessary to sell, thus market, project ideas. Throughout this paper, the terms customer and market are used. For the purposes of interpreting the usefulness of this process to non- commercial development, these terms can best be thought of as the users of the software product (major commands, logistics centers, etc). By carefully examining the current software development process as done by the DOD and the Air Force (DOD-STD-2167A), and comparing it to the equivalent commercial development process, it is possible to better understand why DOD-STD-2167A is structured at system-level development and to objectively evaluate the merits of the current development process (DOD-STD-2167A).

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 1990
Accession Number
ADA223783

Entities

People

  • James W. Mccord

Organizations

  • Wright Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Application Software
  • Business Administration
  • Commerce
  • Computer Program Documentation
  • Computer Program Reliability
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Programs
  • Computers
  • Life Cycles
  • Operating Systems
  • Organizational Structure
  • Project Management
  • Software Development
  • Standards
  • Test And Evaluation
  • Test Methods

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Engineering

Readers

  • Industrial Economics
  • Software Engineering.
  • Systems Analysis and Design