Some ways of categorizing software projects
It is important to distinguish between the main types of software project because what is appropriate in one context might not be so in another. For example, SSADM, the Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method, is suitable for developing information systems but not necessarily other types of system.
Embedded systems are also called real-time or industrial systems.
Information systems versus embedded systems
A distinction may be made between information systems and embedded systems. Very crudely, the difference is that in the former case the system interfaces with the organization, whereas in the latter case the system interfaces with a machine! A stock control system would be an information system that controls when the organization reorders stock. An embedded, or process control, system might control the air conditioning equipment in a building. Some systems may have elements of both so that the stock control system might also control an automated warehouse.
Exercise 1.3
Would an operating system on a computer be an information system or an embedded system?
Service level agreements are becoming increasingly important as organizations contract out functions to external service suppliers.
Objectives versus products
Projects may be distinguished by whether their aim is to produce a product or to meet certain objectives.
A project might be to create a product the details of which have been specified by the client. The client has the responsibility for justifying the product.
On the other hand, the project might be required to meet certain objectives. There might be several ways of achieving these objectives in contrast to the constraints of the product-driven project. One example of this is where a new information system is implemented to improve some service to users inside or outside an organization. The subject of an agreement would be the level of service rather than the characteristics of a particular information system.
Many software projects have two stages. The first stage is an objectives-driven project, which results in a recommended course of action and may even specify a new software application to meet identified requirements. The next stage is a project actually to create the software product.
Would the project to implement an independent payroll system at the Brightmouth Exercise 1.4 College described in Exercise 1.2 above be an objectives-driven project or a product-driven project?
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