Software Development Models

Software Development Models
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Software Development Models
Software development process occasionally referred to as software development life cycle, though not technically synonymous, is a structural baseline used to standardize the development of software and their products. It is usually regarded as a subset of system development life cycle. Software development process can also have descriptive or prescriptive characterization with the former modeled to describe how previous as specific software systems was developed. The latter is the contemporary form of software development process that dictates how software should be created and in particular settings (Whitten & Bentley, 2005). Prescriptive life cycle model are easier to formulate, thus commonly used. This is evident as idiosyncratic details and information on software development can be discounted, extrapolated, or put off for subsequent consideration. Descriptive require arduous collection of data over years of software’s life cycle that have not yet accumulated comprehensive data to be used to articulate an empirically established life model.
Software development process articulates the specification, design, validation, and evolution in modeling and is categorized differently. Traditional life models were context free compared to the modern context-sensitive life models. These models describe variant approaches to processes’ tasks and activities. These current software life cycle models include; waterfall, iterative, incremental, agile and spiral models which feature in most software development programs (Sommerville, 2004).
The waterfall life cycle model has been in use as a classic and is synonymous to linear-sequential life cycle model. Its major advantage is that it is relatively easy to understand and implement since it has a steadily flowing downward development through phases that do not overlap; analysis, design, implementation, testing (validation), integration, and maintenance. The fore-mentioned advantage bestows the model the ease in management and maintenance due to its rigid characteristic since each phase has its own review process and specific deliverables (Whitten & Bentley, 2005). The biggest disadvantage for water fall life model is that its development involves high risks since errors or adjustment scopes can ruin the project attributed to its rigidity. Another disadv...