Objectives of Software Engineering

Maintainability

Software is not a static entity. In today's market, if you produce a valuable product that functions flawlessly but is difficult to tweak and adapt to new requirements, it will not survive. Maintainability is a long-term component of software that indicates how easily it may adapt and alter, which is crucial in today's agile environment.

What is Software Maintenance

The simplicity with which you can repair, improve, and comprehend software code is referred to as maintainability. Software maintenance is a step of the software development cycle that begins after the product has been delivered to the client. Developers provide maintainability by constantly modifying software to suit new client expectations and handling customer complaints. This includes bug fixes, optimizing existing functionality, and modifying code to prevent future problems. 

Why Does Software Require Maintenance?

There are several reasons to maintain software after it has been provided to the customer:

• Bug fixing - This entails searching for and resolving faults for the software to work smoothly.
• Enhancement - Improving the program to provide additional features requested by clients.
• Replacement - The removal of undesirable functions to increase adaptability and efficiency.
• Security issues - Resolving security flaws discovered in your proprietary code or third-party code, particularly open-source components

Efficiency

In general, efficiency is defined as the ratio of energy consumed to work performed to produce a product. However, when it comes to software development, "efficiency" is defined as the amount of software developed or user requirements fulfilled divided by the number of resources consumed, such as time and effort, among other things. In other words, being efficient usually implies avoiding wastage. Defects, waits, overproduction, innovation, and excessive revisions are all examples of waste in software development. As a result, efficiency in software development leads to shorter product life cycles, faster time to market, and, ultimately, a better final result.

Correctness

In software engineering, correctness is accomplished when a program or system operates exactly as planned for all of its use cases. Engineers create a list of specs that their system must follow in order to be correct before developing software. A system is only ready for use if it achieves accuracy, as it may be hazardous or incomplete.

Best Practices to Achieve Correctness

It is recommended that the following best practices be followed to make the process of establishing correctness easier:

• No matter how complex the problem or use case is, it must be explained explicitly and in-depth.
• Dry run your algorithm and test its logic on paper before beginning to code.
• As soon as a component's development is finished, try to add testing.
• Reuse existing code and components that have previously been thoroughly tested.

Reusability

Software reusability is a property that refers to a software component's predicted reuse potential. Software reuse not only boosts productivity but also enhances the quality and maintainability of software products. Reusability in computer science and software engineering is defined as the use of existing assets within the software product development process; these assets are products and byproducts of the software development life cycle and include code, software components, test suites, designs, and documentation.

Testability

Testability in software refers to the extent to which any module, requirement, subsystem, or other components of the architecture can be confirmed as satisfactory or not. High testability means that errors are simple to detect, and isolating them as part of your team's regular testing procedure is straightforward.

A testable architecture should clearly indicate integration points between swappable, isolated components. It should also provide a scriptable test architecture that allows programmers and testers to replicate exact production conditions. This will enable them to duplicate failures, isolate them, and discover the appropriate solution.

Reliability

Software reliability is defined as a system's or component's ability to perform its required functions under static conditions for a set amount of time. It is the likelihood that a software system will complete its assigned task in a given environment for a set number of input cases, provided that the hardware and input are error-free. Software Functionality, usability, performance, serviceability, capability, installability, maintainability, and documentation are all components of software quality. 

Portability

Software portability is the capacity to use the same software in different contexts. It refers to software that is available on two or more platforms or that can be recompiled for them. Common types of portability include application, source code, and data portability.

Why is Software Portability Required?

• Portability is synonymous with stability in Dev-ops. You don't want different behaviour on different platforms, and you don't want to waste time dealing with environment-related configurations. Imagine tuning your environments for each and every stage; no dev-ops team wants to deal with unnecessary labour simply because the code is not adaptable.
• Portable software can be easily used on other platforms by development teams. So, if your development team relocates to a new environment, you don't want to waste time and resources re-developing. They also wish to avoid contractual obligations (on certain libraries or dependencies).
• The key purpose for porting for sales teams is to reach a larger audience. There are different hardware and software platforms available. More users equal more profit.

Adaptability

Adaptation of software systems is almost an inevitable process due to the change in customer requirements, the need for faster development of new or maintenance of existing software systems, etc. Numerous techniques have been developed to deal with the adaptation of software systems.

Interoperability

The capacity of different solutions to freely and readily communicate with one another is referred to as software interoperability. Interoperable systems exchange real-time data without needing specialized IT assistance or behind-the-scenes code.