subject: What Is Software Product Engineering All About? [print this page] Product engineering lets a manager imagine flow-chart like structures for approaching the final result, while starting from scratch. It defines the outlines structure for deploying different processes so as to achieve the end product in a more time-efficient yet qualitative manner.
Software industry has also noticed the success rate of deploying a proper formatted work-flow rather than doing things in a random manner without analyzing the impact of such activity on other processes. Software product engineering involves all the steps which integrate different development processes to build a correct software application which is equally consistent in performance and effectiveness.
A software development company performs various activities which allow it to successfully develop a quality product in an optimum amount of time. Proper planning and scheduling of tasks is done in order to do the same. Some top-level activities are described in their abstract form:
Initially, the requirements for the software application to be developed are gathered through public polls if its a generic application and from top level management if a customized application is to be developed.
After all the requirements have been documented, planning for the development process is performed by a group of experts. Different strategies to develop the product are documented here.
Design phase takes the input of the requirements and draws a rough sketch for the architecture of the application. How the application would look after it is developed, is decided here.
After designing is done, actual coding for the application starts. Coding the application provides it the functionality to perform according to the instructions. In the light of requirements and the designs prepared earlier helps developer to clearly understand what action should be executed after certain event is triggered.
As coding creates an application for performing various functions, checking to see whether application is working according to the requirements is done through proper testing. Different testing strategies and level of testing are deployed to cross-check the functionality.
On successful passing through the testing phase, the application is finally installed for deployment.
The main feature at each stage of product development engineering process is the documentation. Documentation is needed to review and ensure that each process associated in the development of application is following the plan of development.
