Abstract:
The development of software takes into account a lot of different tasks until the
software is released. The order in which these tasks are done is called the software
development life cycle. When software development projects become larger and
much complicated, it becomes more difficult to manage the software development
process and issues such as updating software features and fixing errors came to
attention. Thus methodologies named software process models which consist of set
of specific activities have been developed. These software process models were
introduced to address issues with changing clients’ requirements, product quality,
cost, time etc. When the software process model is not properly suitable for
developing software, ultimately the end software product will be affected. On the
other hand, each of these model’s effectiveness varies with project circumstances. It
is widely acknowledged that no single model is effective in all situations. At present,
the most of software development companies have their own process models and
standards in developing software due to increasing complexity of software projects
and high demand for the software project success. They have been adding
customization to theoretical process models according to projects’ characteristics and
improving software development process to deliver better software products.
However, there is lack of studies about real world, currently implementing software
process models in software industry and about the changes/improvements in those
process models according to projects characteristics thus creating a knowledge gap
about what are the new changes/improvements in process models in current industry.
In this research, we focus on this gap and a survey is conducted on 25 software
projects from various software development companies. Through the survey it is
found out about currently implementing software process models in different types
of software projects and what are the new customizations done to those software
process models according to the project characteristics. Finally we come up with
suggestions to tailor software process models according to software projects and
discover new trends in software process models.
