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Separated by something?
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03/11/2005
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Although it has been many years since system designers and software developers were actually segregated by brick walls, it sometimes seems as though this is still the case. Or at least that is how it can appear when the time comes for system integration to begin.
Within the system design workflow, the historical issue was not so much a lack of communication, but the opportunity for miscommunication and ambiguities at the interfaces between design phases: customer requirement identification; written specification; analysis; design; and prototyping.
Wherever there is a handover, errors can occur. What’s more, having discovered the need to make changes at the system integration stage, the opportunities present themselves all over again as the trail is followed backwards to the requirements stage.
This traditional model is illustrated by the ‘waterfall’ chart (see figure 1), where the smooth flow from requirement to prototype is broken, not only by the possibility of handover errors at each step, but also by manual interventions from the implementation side. Time pressure invariably means development teams move to coding earlier than may be ideal, increasing the likelihood of further iterations. All of which adds time – the one resource that is in short supply for development teams.
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Author
Graham Pitcher
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