The creative step in designing real-time software

Abstract

A brief survey of the software design process as currently carried out in industrial practice is given, including statements on the relevance of the various well known design methods. The transition from the functional/data model to the top level design is identified as the most difficult of the whole design process. It can only be accomplished by a creative step (which may be iterative), together with intuition and engineering experience. No method can replace the creativity and experience of a designer. However, the (semi)formal sequencing of steps of the methods is helpful in managing the development process. More importantly, some methods include very good guidelines on how to get to a good design. But these guidelines may be vague and sometimes conflicting, as is in the nature of the problem. It is proposed to collect all useful design guidelines from various methods and all other design experience as a set of rules, faciliating the creative step in designing realtime software. In the future, this set of rules could be incorporated into an expert system for checking the quality of a real-time software design.