Software qualityIn the context of software engineering, software quality refers to two related but distinct notions: Software's functional quality reflects how well it complies with or conforms to a given design, based on functional requirements or specifications. That attribute can also be described as the fitness for purpose of a piece of software or how it compares to competitors in the marketplace as a worthwhile product. It is the degree to which the correct software was produced.
Software deploymentSoftware deployment is all of the activities that make a software system available for use. The general deployment process consists of several interrelated activities with possible transitions between them. These activities can occur on the producer side or on the consumer side or both. Because every software system is unique, the precise processes or procedures within each activity can hardly be defined. Therefore, "deployment" should be interpreted as a general process that has to be customized according to specific requirements or characteristics.
Software development processIn software engineering, a software development process is a process of planning and managing software development. It typically involves dividing software development work into smaller, parallel, or sequential steps or sub-processes to improve design and/or product management. It is also known as a software development life cycle (SDLC). The methodology may include the pre-definition of specific deliverables and artifacts that are created and completed by a project team to develop or maintain an application.
DevOpsDevOps is a methodology in the software development and IT industry. Used as a set of practices and tools, DevOps integrates and automates the work of software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) as a means for improving and shortening the systems development life cycle. Proposals to combine software development methodologies with deployment and operations concepts began to appear in the late 80s and early 90s.
Software testingSoftware testing is the act of examining the artifacts and the behavior of the software under test by validation and verification. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to appreciate and understand the risks of software implementation. Test techniques include, but are not necessarily limited to: analyzing the product requirements for completeness and correctness in various contexts like industry perspective, business perspective, feasibility and viability of implementation, usability, performance, security, infrastructure considerations, etc.
Continuous deliveryContinuous delivery (CD) is a software engineering approach in which teams produce software in short cycles, ensuring that the software can be reliably released at any time and, following a pipeline through a "production-like environment", without doing so manually. It aims at building, testing, and releasing software with greater speed and frequency. The approach helps reduce the cost, time, and risk of delivering changes by allowing for more incremental updates to applications in production.
Application lifecycle managementApplication lifecycle management (ALM) is the product lifecycle management (governance, development, and maintenance) of computer programs. It encompasses requirements management, software architecture, computer programming, software testing, software maintenance, change management, continuous integration, project management, and release management. ALM is a broader perspective than the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), which is limited to the phases of software development such as requirements, design, coding, testing, configuration, project management, and change management.
Software release life cycleThe software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product. It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the final version, or "gold", is released to the public. Pre-alpha refers to the early stages of development, when the software is still being designed and built. Alpha testing is the first phase of formal testing, during which the software is tested internally using white-box techniques.
Extreme programmingExtreme programming (XP) is a software development methodology intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of agile software development, it advocates frequent releases in short development cycles, intended to improve productivity and introduce checkpoints at which new customer requirements can be adopted.
Regression testingRegression testing (rarely, non-regression testing) is re-running functional and non-functional tests to ensure that previously developed and tested software still performs as expected after a change. If not, that would be called a regression. Changes that may require regression testing include bug fixes, software enhancements, changes, and even substitution of electronic components (hardware). As regression test suites tend to grow with each found defect, test automation is frequently involved.
Test automationIn software testing, test automation is the use of software separate from the software being tested to control the execution of tests and the comparison of actual outcomes with predicted outcomes. Test automation can automate some repetitive but necessary tasks in a formalized testing process already in place, or perform additional testing that would be difficult to do manually. Test automation is critical for continuous delivery and continuous testing.
Feature toggleA feature toggle in software development provides an alternative to maintaining multiple feature branches in source code. A condition within the code enables or disables a feature during runtime. In agile settings the toggle is used in production, to switch on the feature on demand, for some or all the users. Thus, feature toggles do make it easier to release often. Advanced roll out strategies such as canary roll out and A/B testing are easier to handle.
Test-driven developmentTest-driven development (TDD) is a software development process relying on software requirements being converted to test cases before software is fully developed, and tracking all software development by repeatedly testing the software against all test cases. This is as opposed to software being developed first and test cases created later. Software engineer Kent Beck, who is credited with having developed or "rediscovered" the technique, stated in 2003 that TDD encourages simple designs and inspires confidence.
Build automationBuild automation is the process of automating the creation of a software build and the associated processes including: compiling computer source code into binary code, packaging binary code, and running automated tests. Historically, build automation was accomplished through s. Today, there are two general categories of tools: Build-automation utility This includes utilities like Make, Rake, CMake, MSBuild, Ant, Maven or Gradle (Java) etc. Their primary purpose is to generate build artifacts through activities like compiling and linking source code.
Release managementRelease management is the process of managing, planning, scheduling and controlling a software build through different stages and environments; it includes testing and deploying software releases. Organizations that have adopted agile software development are seeing much higher quantities of releases. With the increasing popularity of agile development a new approach to software releases known as Continuous delivery is starting to influence how software transitions from development to a release.
Branching (version control)Branching, in version control and software configuration management, is the duplication of an object under version control (such as a source code file or a directory tree). Each object can thereafter be modified separately and in parallel so that the objects become different. In this context the objects are called branches. The users of the version control system can branch any branch. Branches are also known as trees, streams or codelines.
Continuous deploymentContinuous deployment (CD) is a software engineering approach in which software functionalities are delivered frequently and through automated deployments. Continuous deployment contrasts with continuous delivery (also abbreviated CD), a similar approach in which software functionalities are also frequently delivered and deemed to be potentially capable of being deployed, but are actually not deployed. As such, continuous deployment can be viewed as a more complete form of automation than continuous delivery.
Coding best practicesCoding best practices or programming best practices are a set of informal rules (best practices) that many software developers in computer programming follow to improve software quality. Many computer programs remain in use for long periods of time, so any rules need to facilitate both initial development and subsequent maintenance and enhancement of source code by people other than the original authors. In the ninety-ninety rule, Tom Cargill is credited with an explanation as to why programming projects often run late: "The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time.
