Instructional Software Analysis: Lessons from Software Development Process Improvement

Instructional software can be defined as any computer program used for instruction. As a means to optimise the development process of instructional software, different authors have defined a range of methods based on software engineering. However, the use of a method does not guarantee the validity and quality of the product developed; hence, a series of software process improvement (SPI) approaches aimed to improve and guarantee the development process that have arisen. The purpose of this paper is to review the aforementioned approaches and to apply them to the analysis phase of the instructional software development process. The analysis phase aims to define the conditions and needs of the project in order to solve uncertainties in early stages of the process.