ISBN : 978-81-963532-2-3 (E-Book) ofscheduleslippage.Risksrelatingtoscheduleslippageariseprimarilyduetotheintangiblenature of software.Therefore,these canbe dealtwithby increasing the visibility of the softwareproduct. Visibility of a software product can be increased by producing relevant documentsduring the development process wherever meaningful and getting these documents reviewed byanappropriateteam.Milestonesshouldbeplacedatregularintervalsthroughasoftwareengineering process to provide a manager with regular indication of progress. Completion of aphase of the development process before followed need not be the only milestones. Every phasecan be broken down to reasonable-sized tasks and milestones can be scheduled for these taskstoo. A milestone is reached, once documentation produced as part of a software engineering taskis produced and gets successfully reviewed. Milestones need not be placed for every activity. Anapproximaterule ofthumb is to set amilestoneevery10 to 15 days. SoftwareConfigurationManagement The results (also called as the deliverables) of a large software development effort typicallyconsist of a large number of objects, e.g. source code, design document, SRS document, testdocument, user’s manual, etc. These objects are usually referred to and modified by a number ofsoftware engineers through out the life cycle of the software. The state of all these objects at anypoint of time is called the configuration of the software product. The state of each deliverableobjectchanges asdevelopment progressesandalso as bugsaredetectedandfixed. Releasevs.Versionvs.Revision A new version of a software is created when there is a significant change in functionality,technology, or the hardware it runs on, etc. On the other hand a new revision of a software refersto minor bug fix in that software. A new release is created if there is only a bug fix, minorenhancementsto the functionality, usability, etc. For example, one version of a mathematical computation package might run on Unixbasedmachines, another on Microsoft Windows and so on. As a software is released and used by thecustomer, errors are discovered that need correction. Enhancements to the functionalities of thesoftware may also be needed. A new release of software is an improved system intended toreplace an old one. Often systems are described as version m, release n; or simple m.n. Formally,a history relation is version of can be defined between objects. This relation can be split into twosubrelations is revision ofand is variant of. Necessityofsoftwareconfigurationmanagement There are several reasons for putting an object under configuration management. But, possiblythe most important reason for configuration management is to control the access to the differentdeliverableobjects.Unlessstrictdisciplineisenforcedregardingupdationandstorageofdiffere nt objects, severalproblems appear. Thefollowing are some of the important problemsthatappear 194 Software Engineering Keerthana P, Manasa KN, Ganga D Bengal
200 Publizr Home