Lecture
This section contains information for company directors and managers responsible for software and automation. This article describes the difference between boxed programs and programs written to order. Further, the main stages of software development are considered. 
To successfully create a program, the developer needs to conduct a survey in order to identify all customer requirements for the software product being created. At this stage there is an explanation of the task. Specialists travel to the customer, clarify requirements, analyze business processes, communicate with experts. 
The main document for these stages of work is the technical task. These stages are the transfer of information from the language of people (TK) to the language of computers. At this stage, coding, testing and documentation is performed. Coding consists of creating software in accordance with the system architecture and the system creation technology defined at the stages of survey and technical design. 
Software testing is carried out on the basis of the developed test plans and testing for them.  At these stages, the system is implemented and personnel is trained according to the following order: The developer provides the first version of the system for preliminary tests. Preliminary tests are conducted by a joint group of representatives of the contractor and the customer according to an agreed program and methodology. The result of the preliminary tests of the system is a protocol , which indicates that the system is ready for trial operation or specifies comments that must be eliminated before installing the system into trial operation. |
 On the basis of the preliminary test report, the parties sign a test operation start report . Trial operation involves the installation of the developed software, user training, participating in the trial operation and logging, in which errors, comments and suggestions are recorded. Personnel training is also necessary so that the customer’s company’s staff can quickly and easily master all the basics of the new system and don’t spend too much time reading the technical documentation. After the end of trial operation, the development company releases an industrial version of the system, which takes into account errors and comments identified during trial operation. This version is submitted to acceptance tests. Based on the acceptance test protocol, the parties sign a certificate of system readiness for commercial operation . |
After putting the system into commercial operation, the customer company uses the developed software product for its own purposes. During the warranty period agreed upon with the customer, the developer provides technical support for the software product. Technical support refers to consultations, as well as the correction of undetected errors at the stage of trial operation, if any. After the completion of the warranty period, and optionally, it is possible to enter into an agreement for technical support of the implemented software product.
Undoubtedly, after development, the customer may want to modify the product or add specific functions, since knowledge comes with experience. To do this, it is enough to agree with the developer, sign a new contract and after some time, the modifications will be introduced into the system.
In software development, software development stages are used to describe the degree of availability of a software product. Also, the development stage may reflect the number of implemented functions planned for a specific version of the program. The stages can either be officially announced and regulated by the developers, or sometimes this term is used informally to describe the state of the product. It should be noted that the stages Beta and Alpha (Pre-Alpha) are not indicators of release instability as they are assigned to the program once or once per series (the series, in this case, counts the number up to the first point), depending on the development system. They can be assigned to multiple releases in a row. The release in this case is considered the completed version (see Release (software)).
Milestone development stages - each stage is assigned a sequence number (1, 2, 3, etc.). For example: “The company made a product that is under development. Now he has the development phase of Milestone 1. ". This can be either pre-alpha or beta, as well as the early stage of development (formerly pre-alpha). Some development steps may be marked as “pre-”. For example, pre-Milestone 1.
Initial development stage - The time period from the start of development to the output of the Alpha stage (or to any other stage if there is no Alpha stage). It is also the name for programs that have not yet entered the alpha or beta stage, but have passed through the development stage, for the initial assessment of the functionality in action. Unlike alpha and beta versions, pre-alpha may not include the full range of program functionality. In this case, all actions performed during the design and development of the program up to testing are implied. Such actions include design development, requirements analysis, application development itself, as well as debugging of individual modules.
Internal Testing - The stage of starting a program as a whole by testers, usually not software developers, but usually within an organization or a community developing a product. It may also be the stage of adding new functionality. Programs at this stage can only be used to familiarize themselves with future opportunities.
Public testing - Stage of active beta testing and debugging of the program that has passed alpha testing (if any). Programs at this level can be used by other software developers to test compatibility. Nevertheless, the programs of this stage may contain a rather large number of errors.
Since the beta product is not the final version, and public testing is performed at the user's own risk and risk, the manufacturer is not liable for any damage caused by using the beta version. Thus, many manufacturers shun responsibility by providing users with only beta versions of the product. So, ICQ in the 2003 version used this trick, releasing the 2003b (b means beta) version of this internet messenger. The final version of ICQ 2003 did not appear, instead two years later ICQ 4 and ICQ 5 came out.
Beta testing phase, release candidate for Beta.
Release Candidate or RC ( release candidate ), Pre-release or Pre is the candidate stage to become stable. The programs of this stage underwent comprehensive testing, due to which all the found critical errors were corrected. But at the same time, there is the likelihood of detecting some more errors that were not noticed during testing.
Release, which is ready to get the title of the release candidate. There may be more bugs in this release.
Release or RTM (English release to manufacturing industrial edition) - edition of the product, ready for replication. This is a stable version of the program that has gone through all the previous stages, in which the major errors have been corrected, but there is a probability of new errors that have been previously noticed. RTM precedes General Availability (GA) when a product is released to the public.
The last stage of product development, which is ready to become an RTM release.
Post-release or Post-RTM (English post-release to manufacturing ), the product edition, which has several differences from RTM and is marked as the very first stage of development of the next product. Such releases are not released for sale, but are distributed to beta testers. This edition can be either stable (if no errors are noticed), or with errors.
The software development process (eng. Software development process , software process ) is the structure according to which software development is built.
There are several models of such a process, each of which describes its own approach, in the form of tasks and / or activities that take place during the process.
The development process consists of many subprocesses, or disciplines, some of which are shown below. In the waterfall model, they go one after another, in other similar processes their order or composition changes.
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