Software Engineering

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6.3 
Architecture-driven software development
This model provides a holistic approach to software development that is predi-
cated upon employing software engineering as the nucleus for planning and executing 
the software development effort. It involves representatives from a variety of software 
disciplines to ensure that the software product requirements are complete and consist-
ent, the technical plans can be accomplished with the established resource budgets, 
and the software product architecture provides a structurally dependable framework 
for software enhancements and evolution throughout the product life cycle.
The failure of previous software methodologies is due to a lack of understand-
ing how to design and foster a software product architecture. While software devel-
opment standards and management practices have been well devised, software 
methodologies have leveraged the strengths of programming languages to facilitate 
proper programmatic design techniques. What has been lacking is the knowledge 
and skills necessary to establish a software product architecture. 
Figure 6.6
 depicts 
an Agile-driven model of software development. This model leaves out the software 
engineering centerpiece and the definition stages focused on establishing a soft-
ware product architecture. Without this software engineering foundation, Agile sim-
ply sidesteps the all-important “design” dilemma and proceeds from requirements 
directly into software implementation. (Note: Based on the Agile Manifesto, it is 
difficult to determine the need for the project management element so it has been 
included in the Agile-driven model.)
FIGURE 6.5
Architecture-driven development model.

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