software engineering methods

A software engineering method is a structured approach to software development
whose aim is to facilitate the production of high-quality software in a cost-effective
way. Methods such as Structured Analysis (DeMarco, 1978) and JSD (Jackson, 1983)
were first developed in the 1970s. These methods attempted to identify the basic
functional components of a system; function-oriented methods are still used. In the
1980s and 1990s, these function-oriented methods were supplemented by objectoriented
(00) methods such as those proposed by Booch (Booch, 1994) and
Rumbaugh (Rumbaugh, et al., 1991). These different approaches have now been
integrated into a single unified approach built around the Unified Modeling
Language (UML) (Booch, et al., 1999; Rumbaugh, et aI., 1999a; Rumbaugh, et al.,
1999b).
There is no ideal method, and different methods have different areas where they
are applicable. For example, object-oriented methods are often appropriate for
interactive systems but not for systems with stringent real-time requirements.
All methods are based on the idea of developing models of a system that may
be represented graphically and using these models as a system specification or design.