Software Must Move! A Description of the Software Assembly Line

This material is posted here with permission of the IEEE. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution must be obtained from the IEEE by writing to [email protected]. By choosing to view this document, you agree to all provisions of the copyright laws protecting it. ABSTRACT This paper describes a set of tools for automating and controlling the development and maintenance of software systems. The mental model is a software assembly line. Program design and construction take place at individual programmer workstations. Integration of individual software components takes place at subsequent stations on the assembly line. Software is moved automatically along the assembly line toward final packaging. Software under construction or maintenance is divided into packages. Each package of software is composed of a recipe and ingredients. Some new terms are introduced to describe the ingredients. The recipe specifies how ingredients are transformed into products. The benefits of the Software Assembly Line for development, maintenance, and management of large-scale computer systems are explained. "We shall never be wholly civilized until we remove the treadmill from the daily job." — Henry Ford Introduction