Building Systems: Analysis of Software Development Methodologies

This report delves into the intricacies of software development, focusing on the process of building systems, specifically through the lens of game development. It begins with an introduction to software development, encompassing its various stages from conception to deployment, and then moves on to a practical example of creating a cell phone game using Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME). The core of the report centers on the analysis of three prominent software development methodologies: the Waterfall model, the Spiral model, and the Agile method. Each method is thoroughly examined, highlighting its strengths, weaknesses, and suitability for different project types. The report provides a comparative analysis of these methodologies, discussing their applicability to various project scenarios and offering recommendations for the most effective approach, with a specific endorsement of Extreme Programming for game development. The report also discusses the planning, designing, coding, and testing phases and compares the three methods across various parameters.

Running head: BUILDING SYSTEMS
Building Systems
[Name of the Student]
[Name of the University]
[Author note]

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Introduction:
Development of a software is a considered to be the process related to the conceiving,
specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing and fixing of the bugs. This is
done so as to get involved in the creation and maintenance of the different, applications or
other software components (1). This is the process which is also defined as the writing and
maintenance of the source code. however, from a boarder sense this process would be
including all the things that are involved in between the conception of the desired software to
the final manifestation of the software of sometimes in the process which are planned and
structured.
This is the scenario where a small organization would be involving themselves in the
designing and development of cell phone game which would be suitable for any kind of cell
phones and this would be done by making use of the programming language Java 2 Micro
Edition.
Discussion:
Developing the game firstly involved the designing phase and after completion of the
designing phase a specific person is assigned along with is the team is assigned to create all
the graphics that are required for the game. This is a time-consuming work (2). After the
designing phase is the building phase which is the next most time-consuming phase after the
designing phase. In this process of game development, most of the design ideas would be
kept constant throughout the building phase. However, most of the plans would not remain
intact. After starting the coding process several changes need to be made. Few steps of the
designing phase were seen to be useful at the time of building and this mostly included the
scenarios of the user and the requirements (3). The design steps are considered to be helpful
only if they are associated with providing directions and provide the game with an identity.

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The main concept of this game is to provide a ladybug with an assistant so as to help
it in moving outside a maze (4). The idea of this game is very much simple and as the
ladybug progresses through different levels it would gain the capability of transforming seeds
to flowers so as to keep track of the places inside the maze where it has already visited.
Once the flower is created by the ladybug points would be awarded and the final
game consisted of two simple levels (5). Users would be offered with different kind of
options all through the game along with a viewing of the basic instructions, credits, restarting
the current level or the current score and many more. After completion of all the levels, the
ladybug would be meeting its princess.
All these levels inside the game would be implemented by making use of two-
dimensional array map which would be representing the spaces that can and cannot be
interacted by the ladybug. Whenever the ladybug tries to make a new move to some new
space then the array would be checked so as to see if the movement of the ladybug was legal
or not (6). In order to ensure the occurrence of this events, the graphics presented needs to be
updated. Precise creation of the maze graphics is to be done so as to fit all the things together.
A subset of Java SE is to be used so as to program the game. Java SE or the Java 2 Micro
Edition or J2ME is one of the freely available programming specifications along with several
other tools that are available in order to work with the language.
Possible methodologies:
Selection of the proper development process acts as an important factor responsible
for the success of any kind of project. There exist many processes which are well known
along with some which are less known. Some of the processes that can be used have been
discussed in the later section of the report. The development cycle consists of 5 phases and
this includes the designing communication, modeling, construction and lastly the deployment

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phase (7). In the communication phase the project gets initiated and after initiation, the
gathering of the requirements is done. Followed by this is the planning phase in which the
estimates are done and plans are made by the team so as to complete the project (8). After the
estimations are done the three other step that is the modeling of the software, construction of
the software and deployment of the project is done.
Three most important development process:
Waterfall model:
This is the oldest paradigm that is followed for the purpose of developing the
software. This model is associated with representing a systematic approach which is linear in
nature. The phases included in the waterfall model software development process are
described in the later section of the report. The major idea which lies behind this is that the
waterfall model is associated with following the processes in a logical order (9). Each phase
of the waterfall model would be followed so as to finish the project in a theoretical way after
construction gets completed. But despite all these an ongoing support would also be provided
to the product even after the completion of the project for a long time.
This type of model is particularly useful whenever the requirements of the project are
understood properly and are stable in nature. But this is not applicable for any of the real-life
projects. Evolution of most of the software programs generally occurs when the customer is
associated with making decisions about the program. The project would be affected
disastrously if any kind of changes occurs at the end of the process. In many cases, it is seen
that the customers actually don’t have any idea about the actual requirements and are
associated with forcing the team in taking the best decision about the way of how the
customers would get satisfied. Besides this, a product would also not be available until it
reaches close to the end of the process (10). This might be responsible for making the

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customers get more impatient. This would be initially responsible for making the process of
decision taking more difficult (11). However, this does not provide them with much
flexibility so as to change the thinking that they are having about the way how the things
would look without spending extra money or by expanding it.
Besides this, there is another problem associated with this process that there are high
possibilities of occurrence of blocking states. Blocking state generally refers to the situation
when a part of the development process is held back due to its dependency on other parts that
are not yet completed.
Spiral model:
This is the process which is associated with the usage of the systematic model of the
waterfall model however this is done in such a way that an iterative approach is adopted.
Each iteration is associated with representing a pass around the spiral, despite of this each of
the spiral models is associated with the usage of the same general framework ideas and this in
turn is associated with reducing the risk as well as the uncertainty which is done by the
development of the early prototype (12). When the entire development process passes
through the iteration the development of the prototype, more complete versions of the actual
program occurs. This in turn is associated with helping in keeping the customers in tune with
the current state of the project. This is also associated with allowing the team to receive an
early feedback from the customer end so as t produce a much desirable program which can
produce as the final program. Each of this is made to pass through the planning phase so as to
allow the team in making certain adjustments in the schedule and the cost that has been
estimated. This model can be applied in the project at any stage or point of time of the
development process, in case if an enhancement is proposed for the project that has been
completed then it is possible to reapply the spiral model at an entry point in the appropriate
phase.

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The capability of handling the projects which are evolving acts as an advantage of the
spiral model over the spiral model. Despite this advantage, there exist certain problems as
well. There exists the possibility that the customers won’t be believing that the revolutionary
approach of developing a software is controllable (13). This is the process which would also
be requiring the uncovering of the risks along with being addressed with expertise. In the case
of the waterfall model if a problem is not covered at the early stage the results obtained
would be disastrous.
Agile method
This is the process which is created so as to address the major assumptions that are
made while developing a software. The assumptions mainly include the following:
1.difficuties in predicting in advance the possible changes that are likely to occur in the initial
software requirements along with the changes which are not going to occur. Besides this, it is
also very much difficult to predict how the priorities that the customers are having are going
to change as the project proceeds forward (14).
2. Along with the difficulties faced during the first prediction, it is also very difficult to know
about how much design is to be done before the construction starts. Design acts as one of the
important factors in understanding the program however the construction is very important
for testing the design.
3. Scheduling, planning, designing, construction, and deployment phases ate are very hard to
plan along with which it is also very hard to know how these phases would be carried out as
the project progresses.
For all this reason there exists a much amount of uncertainty in developing the
software. This is the process which tries to address all these assumptions by providing
adaptability to the ever-changing project program and many more (16). In case if a software

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team want to achieve success then it is essential that they have a common focus along with
having competence, try to collaborate with one another, have the capability taking decisions,
having the capability of solving fuzzy problems, should have mutual respect as trust amongst
one another and lastly should be self-organized.
Comparison of the three methods:
SPIRAL MODEL WATERFALL MODEL AGILE MODEL
1] this is not suitable for
small projects.
1] this is suitable for small
projects
1] this is suitable for small
projects
2] Risk management is
better
2] existence of the High
amount of risk along with high
rate uncertainty.
2] faces more amount of risk
related to sustainability and
maintenance.
Minimum rules,
documentation easily
employed.
3] this is a complex process 3] this process is Easy to
understand.
3] very easy to manage.
4] indefinite progress of the
process
4] consists of clearly defined
Stages (17)
4] Little or no planning
required
5] This is the model which
is suitable for projects
which are long and
ongoing.
5] This is the model which is
not suitable for projects which
are long and ongoing
5] Suitable for small projects.
6] following the Iterations 6] following the Sequence 6] Every iteration is a
separate model
7] Flexible with user
requirements
7] Requirements once fixed
cannot be modified
7] highly Depends on
customer interaction
8]easy possibilities of
doing the Refinements
8] Refinements are not so easy 8] Agile is the combination
of iterative and incremental

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9] Phases are repeated itself 9] Phases are processed and
completed one at a time.
9]
Early delivery of partial
working solutions.
Recommendation:
The process that is highly recommended for developing this game is the extreme
programming and this is the process which consists of activities that form the four basic
phases and this includes the planning phase, designing phase, coding phase, and the testing
phase. At the planning phase, the customer is associated with the relation of user stories for
the team associated with development. These user stories are very much similar to use case
and in this, they are associated with describing the functional feature that is to be included in
the product obtained after completion. The customer who would be using the game would be
associated with breaking the functionalities in small sections which are known as a story on
each of the index card. Followed by this is the designing phase and this step needs to be kept
simple. The basic idea lying behind this is t keep all the designs very simple and no new
things which are unnecessary should not be added to the current task. Instead of this
development team should be associated with the usage of spike solutions. This type of
solution is developed whenever a new problem is encountered by the team. After this comes
the coding phase which starts with the development of unit tests and once the coding phase
completes comes the testing phase which generally focuses upon the unit tests that are created
during the designing and coding phase. All these tests are automated and this is done because
of the fact that in case if any changes occur in the future then the tests can be rerun so as to
check the accuracy. This phase also includes the acceptance test.

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Conclusion:
The report discusses some of the key concepts themes and skills that are related to the
development of the game software. Some of the major methodologies that are likely to be
adopted have been discussed in the report as well along with a comparative analysis which
includes the agile, spiral and the waterfall model. Lastly, the report has been associated with
recommending the appropriate methodology that is the “extreme programming” can be used
for the purpose of developing the game. However, it is to be noted that this is the process that
focuses mostly on the programming and tests that are very much important for the software.
Along with keeping things simple, this methodology particularly gets straight to the point and
some people also believe the fact that not much time is spent upon the designing phase in this
type of methodology. Due to this reason spending a very little time in designing phase might
result in coding and re-coding and this would be initially leading to reduced productivity. So,
it is very much important to have spend sufficient time in the designing phase as well.

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