Software Engineering

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17.2 
Software engineering integrated product team 
17.2 
 Software engineering integrated product team 
(software requirements definition stage)
The lead software engineer should establish and chair the SWE-IPT. The SWE-IPT 
represents the technical working group of software specialists and subject-matter 
experts who will contribute to the software engineering tasks. The SWE-IPT should 
be a multidisciplinary team whose membership represents the various software 
disciplines, including software engineering, software implementation, computing 
environment implementation, software post-development process implementation, 
software test and evaluation, software development management, safety, security, 
and human–system integration, as applicable.
1. 
Develop the operational model
. The SWE-IPT should conduct software require-
ments analysis tasks to capture stakeholder requirements and constraints as 
they relate to the business or embedded system processes for which the soft-
ware is being developed. Stakeholders
2
 typically include customers, marketing, 
business management, partners, suppliers, and subcontractors. An operational 
model should be developed to depict the various threads through the business 
processes, including the business rules that govern how the process is conducted 
and how the process responds to the various situations that may be encountered.
2. 
Develop the initial functional behavioral model
. The SWE-IPT should conduct 
functional analysis and allocation to decompose the abstract or challenging 
operational tasks allocated to the software product. Functional analysis estab-
lishes a more detailed model or representation of how the software product 
and elements of the computing environment should collaboratively enable the 
operational processes. Functional analysis accomplishes this by decomposing 
high-level functions into lower-level functions, arranging functions in logical 
sequences, and allocating performance requirements from higher- to lower-level 
functions. Data flows among functions should be derived from the data flows 
identified in the operational model. Abstract operational data should be decom-
posed into a set of software data elements and each assigned a unique identifier.
3. 
Synthesize conceptual design alternatives
. The SWE-IPT should conduct 
software design synthesis to establish initial concepts for the structure of the 
physical architecture.
⁎
 The initial structural concepts should identify primary 
structural components and their interfaces. Each element of a structural concept 
should be traceable to the functional architecture allowing for some consolida-
tion of similar or common functionality to be assigned to a structural compo-
nent. The structural concepts may be presented as a product hierarchy or as a 
product block diagram. The product block diagram should describe the product 
structural layout, internal interfaces among the structural components, and 
external interfaces with elements of the computing environment.
2 
Stakeholders also include each of the software development organizations and representatives from 
the project management team.

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