Software Engineering

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9.1 
Embracing change
Technical planning must account for administrative practices; however, the 
effort associated with these practices should be incorporated into each of the techni-
cal tasks definitions. The work breakdown structure (WBS) and its work packages 
should focus on the identification of technical effort. Each work package must iden-
tify its contribution toward achieving interim development objectives for the soft-
ware product. Administrative charges must be incorporated into each work package 
definition and should be restrained as a resource liability and treated as an overhead 
charge. Documenting technical planning, software design, implementation, and test 
procedures are not administrative tasks.
The merits of a proposed change to stakeholder needs should be evaluated 
before much effort is expended on determining its impact on the project frame-
work. Proposals that merit further consideration must be evaluated to understand 
the importance of the proposed change to the operational concept and the repercus-
sions to the software product architecture and project work load. Proposed changes 
should be able to be integrated into the architecture without increasing product 
complexity or risk to achieving project cost and schedule objectives.
The software product architecture involves four primary quality attributes
1
:
1. 
Integrity
, which is the ability of separately implemented software elements to 
work cooperatively together (software implementation).