There are three Essential External Dimensions, {Function, Time, Money} and multiple Internal Dimensions.
I'm ot sure where/how "Real-Time" is covered, it isn't just "Performance": the necessary concurrency (not just "parallelism") and asynchronous events/processing require 10-100 times the cognitive capacity to deal with, and problems scale-up extraordinarily (faster than exponential) due to this added complexity. This is why Operating Systems and embedded critical systems (health/medicine, aerospace control, nuclear, Telecomms, Routers/Switches, Storage Devices, ...) are so difficult and expensive.
Not understanding and enumerating these multiple Dimensions whilst seemingly teaching Functionality only is perhaps currently the single biggest single failure of the discipline of Software Engineering.
The Necessary or Essential Dimensions of the further Software phases of Software Construction, Software Deployment and Software Maintenance besides the meta-processes of Software Project Management and I.T. Operations are beyond the scope of this piece.
This non-exhaustive taxonomy implies that there are additional Essential Dimensions, such as Maintainability and Manageability, elsewhere in the Computing/I.T. milieu.
My apologies in advance that this piece is in itself a first pass and not yet definitive.
+++ Need to deal with "Documentation" vs "Literate Programming" vs "Slices & tools"
+++ Dev - Ops. Infrastructure is part of the deliverable. Scripts on PRD/DEV/TST must be same. Software Config Mgt and Migration/Fail-back/Fail-over are different and essential/necessary
Software Design:
I'm using Software Design in an unconventional sense:
everything that precedes and defines Coding and Construction.
While noting that Software Design and Construction are closely intertwined and inter-dependent and that all Software Projects are iterative, especially after notional Deployment and during Software Maintenance.
The acts of coding and testing uncover/reveal failings, errors, assumptions, blind-spots and omissions in the Design and its underlying models and concepts.
Where do the various Testing activities belong?
Wherever your Process or Project Methodology define them to be.
Many Software Design problems are revealed when first attempting to construct tests and later in performing them. Thus creating feedback, corrections and additional requirements/constraints.
What's an "Essential Dimension"?
In Formal Logic and Maths, there's the notion of "necessary and sufficient conditions" for a relationship or dependency to hold.
It is in this sense that I'm defining an "Essential Dimension" of elements or phases in the Software process, that they individually be Necessary and together be Sufficient for a complete solution/result.
A Dimension is Essential if it's removal, omission or non-performance results in Defective, Incomplete, Ineffective, Non-Performing or Non-Compliant Software and Systems.A marker of an Essential is
Or more positively, a Dimension is Essential if it must be performed to achieve the desired/specified process and product outputs and outcomes.
Defective, or colloquially "Buggy", Software, has many aspects, not just "Erroneous, Invalid or Inconsistent Results".
The term is meant to be parsed against each of the Essential Design Dimensions for specific meanings, such as "Hacked or Compromised" (Security), "Failure to Proceed or Complete" (i.e. crash or infinite loop: Quality), "Too Slow" (Performance), "Corrupt or Lose Data" (Quality), "Unmaintainable" (Quality) and "Maxed out" (Scalability).
Initial candidate Essential Dimensions.
From my experience and observations of the full Software cycle and I.T. Operations, a first cut, not in order of importance:
- F - Functionality
- Q - Quality
- P - Performance
- R - Reliability/Recovery
- S - Security/Safety
- U - Usability
- C - Concurrency/Synchronousness
- O - Operability/Manageability
- S - Scalability
- T - Testability
Which Dimension is most important?
All and None: it depends on the specific project or task and its goals, constraints and requirements.
An essential outcome of the Specification phase of Software Design is to precisely define:
- The criteria for each Essential Design Dimensions for the Product, Project, all Tasks and every Component.
- The relative importance of the Dimensions.
- How to assess final compliance to these criteria in both Business and Technical realms.
Which of its many aspects are critical for any project, sub-system, task, phase or component, and how they will be monitored, controlled and confirmed, must be defined by your meta-processes or derived through the execution of your Methodology.
Minimally, any Professionally produced Software component or product must be shown to conform both to the Zeroth Law requirements (keep running, terminate, Do no Damage and produce results) and its written Functional Requirements/Specifications.
Quality
Zeroth Law requirements (keep running, terminate, Do no Damage and produce results)
From "The quality of software", Hoare, Software-Practice and Experience Vol 2, 1972 p103-5
Hoare's Software Quality Criteria:
(1) Clear definition of purpose
(2) Simplicity of use
(3) Ruggedness
(4) Early availability
(5) Reliability
(3) Ruggedness
(4) Early availability
(5) Reliability
(6) Extensibility and improvability in light of experience
(7) Adaptability and easy extension to different configurations
(8) Suitability to each individual configuration of the range
(9) Brevity
(10) Efficiency (speed)
(9) Brevity
(10) Efficiency (speed)
(11) Operating ease
(12) Adaptability to wide range of applications
(13) Coherence and consistency with other programs
(14) Minimum cost to develop
(15) Conformity to national and international standards
(13) Coherence and consistency with other programs
(14) Minimum cost to develop
(15) Conformity to national and international standards
(16) Early and valid sales documentation
(17) Clear accurate and precise user’s documentsSecurity/Safety
Performance
Usability
Reliability/Recovery
Scalability
Testability
- Functional Testing or Specification Compliance Testing?
- Load Testing
- Regression Testing, post-Release esp.
- Acceptance Testing. Commercial Compliance?
- Others?
Operability/Manageability
No comments:
Post a Comment