Software Development: a Product Life-Cycle Perspective

摘要

This paper describes the complete cycle of the development of a software productin the commercial software industry. This development cycle includes three major categories. These categories are pre-development, development, and post-development activities. By carefully studying the commercial development cycle, deficiencies in the way the Air Force and the DOD develop software can be identified. Although several of the ideas described in this process does not directly relate to development in a non-commercial world, most do relate in some form or fashion. Although marketing, in the true sense, is not done in a non-commercial world, it is necessary to sell, thus market, project ideas. Throughout this paper, the terms customer and market are used. For the purposes of interpreting the usefulness of this process to non-commercial development, these terms can best be thought of as the users of the software product (major commands, logistics centers, etc). By carefully examining the current software development process as done by the DOD and the Air Force (DOD-STD-2167A), and comparing it to the equivalent commercial development process, it is possible to better understand why DOD-STD-2167A is structured at system-level development and to objectively evaluate the merits of the current development process (DOD-STD-2167A).