Unified Software Development Process

All the ideas in this book can be applied whether or not you are following the Unified Software Development Process (USDP). If you are, however, following USDP you might find Table P.2 useful: It provides guidance on phases of the USDP in which you will find the application of the techniques of each chapter most beneficial. A checkmark indicates the phase in which the techniques as exemplified in the chapter would likely occur. A plus sign indicates other phases in which the techniques could be applied, but which are not specifically illustrated in the chapter.

Table P.2. Suggested phase of Unified Software Development Process for application in each chapter. A checkmark indicates use as described in chapter. A plus sign indicates additional uses not specifically covered in the chapter.

	Chapter	Inception	Elaboration	Construction	Transition
QFD	1		+	+	+
	2
Software Reliability Engineering	3
	4
Model-Based Specification	5			+
	6
Configuration/Portfolio Mngt.	7	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
	8	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

To review Table P.2, moving top to bottom, QFD is a technique that by design is capable of being applied in all phases of a project. The example provided in Chapter 1 illustrates its use during inception in helping a team decide the focus of a release. The application of QFD in Chapter 2 is focused on planning and coordinating use case distributed development and would be used in elaboration and/or construction.

Chapter 3 is concerned with operational profiles that would be created during elaboration, then their results used in all subsequent phases for prioritization of effort and resource. The setting of reliability goals discussed in Chapter 4 would occur as part of planning done in elaboration. The use of those reliability goals would then be used in tracking reliability growth of the product during testing in construction and transition.

Having used QFD or operational profiles to identify use cases that were frequently used, critical and/or important to business drivers, the model-based specification techniques of Chapter 5 would be used in elaboration for failure analysis of the system as described by those key use cases. In construction, those same techniques could also be used in specifying class or component interfaces using design by contract. In Chapter 6, test planning based on the work of Chapter 5 would be done as part of late elaboration or early construction. The test cases would be used in all subsequent phases as a basis for testing.

Finally, the calculation of ROI on a requirements configuration management tool, covered in Chapter 7, and project portfolio management, covered in Chapter 8, would occur as separate programs apart from any single software product release and so are not applicable to specific phases per se. The results of project portfolio management would of course be used as part of the input to the inception phase of all projects.