Software lifecycle notes — GOALS, waterfall, and verification vs validation

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0400

These pages are from a software engineering textbook I used in coursework. I grouped the figures here as a single reference: goal-oriented planning, how the waterfall model sequences activities (with verification and validation paired to each phase), an incremental variant, the textbook’s list of life-cycle subgoals, a reminder that method advice depends on context, and a short ethics passage about impact on people.

GOALS approach (Figure 3-1)

The GOALS flowchart is a top-down pattern: set overall life-cycle goals (functions, constraints, schedule, usability, maintainability), analyze the problem and sketch solution structure, separate concerns into subgoals, develop solutions for each subgoal in parallel where possible, then validate those solutions against the other goals and iterate until the decision “all goals satisfied?” is yes.

Validation on Antoine Boucher

Software lifecycle notes — GOALS, waterfall, and verification vs validation

GOALS approach (Figure 3-1)