Methodology of functionality selection for water management software and examples of its application

Abstract

When developing new software products and adapting existing software, project leaders have to decide which functionalities to keep, adapt or develop. They have to consider that the cost of making errors during the specification phase is extremely high. In this paper a formalised approach is proposed that considers the main criteria for selecting new software functions. The application of this approach minimises the chances of making errors in selecting the functions to apply. Based on the work on software development and support projects in the area of water resources and flood damage evaluation in economic terms at CH2M HILL (the developers of the flood modelling package ISIS), the author has defined seven criteria for selecting functions to be included in a software product. The approach is based on the evaluation of the relative significance of the functions to be included into the software product. Evaluation is achieved by considering each criterion and the weighting coefficients of each criterion in turn and applying the method of normalisation. This paper includes a description of this new approach and examples of its application in the development of new software products in the are of the water resources management.