Software Characteristics

Important characteristics of software are:

11.   Software is engineering, not manufactured

Software development and hardware development are two different activities. Quality problems that occur in hardware manufacturing phase cannot be removed easily. On the other hand, during software development process such problems can be rectified.

22.   Software does not wear out

Software does not get affected from environmental maladies. Hence ideally it should have an “idealized cvurve”. But due to some undiscovered errors the failure rate is high and drops down as soon as the errors get corrected. Hence in failure rating of software the “actual curve” is as shown below:

During the life of software if any change is made, some defected may get introduced. This causes failure rate to be high.

3.   Most software is custom built rather than being assembled from components

The software development approach is getting changed and we look for reusability of software components. It is practiced to reuse algorithms and data structures. Today software industry is trying to make library for reusable components. For example: in today’s software, GUI is built using the reusable components such as message windows, pull down menus and many more such components. The approach is getting developed to use in-built components in the software. This stream of software is popularity known as component engineering.