Book Image

The Complete Edition - Software Engineering for Real-Time Systems

By : Jim Cooling
Book Image

The Complete Edition - Software Engineering for Real-Time Systems

By: Jim Cooling

Overview of this book

From air traffic control systems to network multimedia systems, real-time systems are everywhere. The correctness of the real-time system depends on the physical instant and the logical results of the computations. This book provides an elaborate introduction to software engineering for real-time systems, including a range of activities and methods required to produce a great real-time system. The book kicks off by describing real-time systems, their applications, and their impact on software design. You will learn the concepts of software and program design, as well as the different types of programming, software errors, and software life cycles, and how a multitasking structure benefits a system design. Moving ahead, you will learn why diagrams and diagramming plays a critical role in the software development process. You will practice documenting code-related work using Unified Modeling Language (UML), and analyze and test source code in both host and target systems to understand why performance is a key design-driver in applications. Next, you will develop a design strategy to overcome critical and fault-tolerant systems, and learn the importance of documentation in system design. By the end of this book, you will have sound knowledge and skills for developing real-time embedded systems.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Preface
15
Glossary of terms

9.7 Agile Software Development

9.7.1 Introduction and Basic Concepts

The core concepts of Agile software development methods can be simply and clearly by reference to Figure 9.66. Here, Figure 9.66(a), we have the classical Waterfall software development process. First, the system requirements are analyzed and, using this information, the software is designed. This is followed by the implementation phase: coding, compilation, and installation of machine code into the target. Finally, the installed software is tested to eliminate bugs, improve performance, and check that it meets its requirements.

Figure 9.66: Agile versus Waterfall software development methods

Well, that seems fine and reasonable. However, its detractors point out that this approach has a number of serious flaws:

  • It is a very rigid technique, lacking the flexibility to incorporate requirement changes during the development process.
  • There isn't any way, during the development...