Program Development Life Cycle - Analysis (CIE IGCSE Computer Science)

This is the act of removing unimportant details of the problem to focus on important elements. An example of abstraction would be the London underground train route map; travellers do not need to know the geographical layout of the routes, only that getting on at stop A will eventually transport you to stop B

Figure 1: London Underground train route map

Figure 2: The geographical London underground train map

• Identification of the problem: Before tackling a problem, it needs to be clearly understood by everyone working on it. The overall goal of the solution needs to be agreed as well as any constraints such as limited resources or requiring a platform specific solution
• Requirements: To create a solution, a requirements document is created to define the problem and break it down into clear, manageable, understandable parts by using abstraction and decomposition. A requirements document labels each requirement, gives it a description as well as success criteria which state how we know when the requirement has been achieved