Software parallel development process

Author: Li Tong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-08-01
Features: Software process is a critical factor in the success of software product development. The maturity of software process capability has become a key metric for measuring the overall effectiveness of a software enterprise. This book draws on the concept of concurrent engineering in manufacturing and applies it to computer software engineering. It focuses on the concurrency in the software development process, aiming to improve software productivity by enabling parallel development as much as possible and enhancing software quality through optimizing and improving the software development process. The software engineering community has long struggled with two major challenges: low software productivity and subpar software quality. The root causes are closely related to software processes. The concurrent software development discussed in this book, inspired by the concept of concurrent engineering in manufacturing, allows various components with different granularities that meet parallel conditions in the software development process (including processes, phases, activities, tasks, etc.) to proceed in parallel, thereby accelerating the software development speed. Just as the significant improvement in hardware computing power was achieved by shifting from serial to parallel, we believe that concurrent software development is one of the promising approaches to enhancing software productivity. Concurrent software development requires considering downstream phases and processes in the early stages, supporting the concurrent and iterative execution of software requirements analysis, design, and downstream phases, emphasizing the relative independence of parallel components, and facilitating frequent interaction among them, thereby improving the software process. Early consideration of downstream factors helps reduce rework, improve the quality of upstream results, and achieve optimized analysis and design. Therefore, concurrent software development also offers a promising breakthrough for enhancing software quality. This book is a specialized academic monograph on the topic of concurrently developing software, summarizing the long-term research achievements of the author supported by multiple National Natural Science Foundation grants. It explores parallel software processes and their models, parallel component partitioning, concurrency discovery and extension, parallel control, testing and integration techniques, computer-aided parallel software development, and the automation of the software development process. The book systematically discusses related concepts, principles, methods, techniques, and tools, and examines the support provided by concurrent software development for CMMI. This book can serve as a textbook and teaching reference for graduate students and senior undergraduate students in computer science, as well as for software engineering professionals.