Chapter 1 Analysis - Introduction

Note This chapter is based on many books, papers and articles. Sometimes I gather the evidence into an indented sub-section that can be skipped if you accept the ideas.

1 Introduction

According to James Martin the problems described in Chapter 0 have given rise to a "Methodology Zoo" [Martin85] pp305-307. In the sixties, methods had to be "modular." In the seventies they had to be "structured." By 1989 they had to be "object oriented" [King89] "My Cat is Object-Oriented". Edward LaBudde accuses the software industry of discarding everything it has learned every five years in favor of new and untested methods [IEEE Software magazine v11n2(Mar 94)pp6&8]. Bruce Blum has published an excellent short history [Blum94]. Robert Glass advocates re-evaluating the academic doctrines of the 60's thru to the 80's [Glass94b]. In this chapter I go back to see what can be salvaged and reused from existing methodologies and practices. An important step is to state the theory and compare it with practice.

If we had a suitable common notation then the salvaged pieces fit together into a system. We do not need another "programming methodology" but a kind of "glue" to connect parts of different methodologies.

Section 2 [ 01_2.html ] covers methods that focus on coding - roughly speaking the product oriented methods of Blum [Blum94]. Section 3 [ 01_3.html ] describes methods that use the software's environment as a guide - problem oriented [Blum94]. Section 4 [ 01_4.html ] examines models of a software life cycle or software process and methodologies that fit them. Section 4.3 gives a re- engineered software production system made of reusable parts of known methodologies. Section 5 [ 01_5.html ] proposes a high level model. Section 6 [ 01_6.html ] wraps up the analysis of our situation and prepares for detailed solutions presented in later chapters.

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