The software development environment

Software development in any organisation requires a range of roles and tools. There will need to be some separation between the development environment and the live or production environment. Different roles such as systems analyst, analyst programmer, programmer, and tester will be required. There will be a need not only to create the application, but also the scripts for the operating system, the start-up procedures, test plans, and technical and user documentation (for which a technical writer may be required). Typically, the development is done in a stepwise manner using a software development lifecycle, although, agile approaches - to be discussed later - are gaining in popularity.

Question : Outline the software development lifecycle. Identify roles. Identify tools required (including development environments, testing tools, harnesses, and metrics). Using a case study tell the story of a software development. What is the mythical man month? What are the issues with software development, particularly around estimating, testing and managing quality?