Software Engineering

The software development life cycle organises development into phases; models like Waterfall, V, spiral and Agile differ in how they sequence and iterate those phases to manage risk, change and cost.

Requirements engineering elicits, analyses, specifies and validates what a system must do (functional) and how well (non-functional), producing a clear, traceable and prioritised specification that drives the rest of development.

UML is a standard visual notation for modelling software: structural diagrams (class, component) show what the system is made of, while behavioural diagrams (use case, sequence, state) show how it behaves.

Agile delivers software in short iterations with continuous feedback; Scrum implements this with defined roles, time-boxed sprints, and artifacts like the backlog and burndown chart to plan and track work.

Software metrics quantify size, complexity and quality — defect density, cyclomatic complexity and reliability measures like MTBF — to inform decisions about testing effort, maintainability and release readiness.