Development Methodologies

Question 1

What are the 7 stages of the software development lifecycle?

Answer 1

• feasibility (is the problem solvable?)
• requirements (working out what the solution needs to do)
• analysis and design (working out how the solution needs to do it)
• implementation (coding the solution)
• testing (testing it works)
• deployment (installing it in the target environment)
• evaluation (asking the user if they are satisfied with the product)

Question 2

What is the 8th magic hidden phase of the software development lifecycle

Answer 2

Maintainence 🌈

Question 3

What are the advantages of the waterfall model?

Answer 3

• simple and easy to manage
• everyone is clear on responsibilities
• clear objectives
• easy to see if project is on schedule

Question 4

What are the disadvantages of the waterfall model?

Answer 4

• carries much risk
• the user is not involved except at the beginning
• misunderstanding requirements could lead to a hard to fix project
• therefore not suitable for complex projects

Question 5

Where should the waterfall model be used?

Answer 5

Large scale, well understood, low risk projects

Question 6

What are the advantages of rapid application development?

Answer 6

• requirements don’t need to be clear at the start
• meetings with the user throughout can provide requirements
• continuous feedback from the user creates an excellent solution

Question 7

What are the disadvantages of rapid application development?

Answer 7

• focused on usability rather than efficiency of the product, not suited for projects requiring code efficiency
• regular contact with the client must be maintained
• scales poorly with large teams

Question 8

Where should rapid application development be used?

Answer 8

When initial requirements are not fully understood

Question 9

What are the advantages of the spiral method?

Answer 9

• risk is at the heart of this model
• excellent for high risk projects

Question 10

What are the disadvantages of the spiral methodology?

Answer 10

• complex nature if risk analysis can be expensive as this is a specialised skill
• project can suffer if risk analysis is done badly

Question 11

When should the spiral methodology be used?

Answer 11

Large scale, high risk projects, especially if the user doesn’t understand the requirements upfront

Question 12

What are the advantages of agile and extreme programming?

Answer 12

• emphasises programming, so likely to be high quality code
• promotes respect and collaboration, so leads to a productive development team

Question 13

What are the disadvantages of agile and extreme programming?

Answer 13

• requires a closely collaborating team, so unlikely to work if the team is spread across a large area geographically
• client must have a full time representative on the team
• some processes involved can be expensive

Question 14

When should agile and extreme programming be used?

Answer 14

When the emphasis of the project is on quality of code

Question 15

What are the stages of the waterfall lifecycle?

Answer 15

• requirements
• design
• coding
• testing
• evaluation

Question 16

What are the stages of rapid application development?

Answer 16

• feasibility
  Loop:
  - requirements/analysis
  - design/coding
  - testing/evaluation
• deployment
• maintainence

Question 17

What are the stages of the spiral methodology?

Answer 17

• determine objectives
• identify and resolve risks
• development and test
• plan the next iteration

RISK DRIVEN

Question 18

What is the structure of the agile methodologies?

Answer 18

• The product is built in a series of sprints
• these are short time boxed periods where the team has focused goals
• each sprint should be bitesize work that takes no more than 4 weeks

Question 19

What are the key values of extreme programming?

Answer 19

• paired programming (two programmers working at one computer)
• collective code ownership
• continuous integration
• code standards
• refactoring (revisiting and redesigning old code)