The product of Software engineering is a software system is a product that serves a function but is not tangible like other products that we see around us in our daily lives. The efficiency and quality of the product depends largely on human’s skill and abilities, therefore one may find huge variations from the desired to be actual. We do believe and rightly so that software has certain distinguishing features that set it apart from the other products.

The typical characteristics of software that differentiate it from other products are:

It is intangible- The product cannot be touched to get an idea of its quality.

It is developed, not manufactured- All though software like other product has to be first designed and then produced, it is not something that will automatically fall out of an assembly line, each piece has to be individual built.Inspite of the availability of a number of automated tools a lot depends on the individual skills and creative abilities of the developers. And that is very difficult t to specify even more difficult to qualify, and virtually impossible to standardize. Managing software development and controlling its quality therefore becomes a highly demanding task.

It is malleable- Most of the items, the software functionality can be changed easily without changing the basic design. In most products that are engineered, any modification requires a change in the design first.

However in the case of software, one can modify the product itself without changing the design. It is very easy to modify the source code of the program without a care for the design document.

That is why software is highly malleable and it is this feature of software that is highly misused. However at times the code changed indiscriminately to suite an immediate requirement, with out realizing the impact that this might have on the overall system.

Does not wear out does not age - The software will function exactly the same way even many years after its development .there is no concept of spare parts – the software itself has to be modified.

These are signs of aging, which most products including human beings start showing with time .The software with cracking joints is a characteristics feature of the software-it does not wear out. But it can deteriorate; as in lose its relevance to changing needs of its user.

If changes are made to the software to cater to the increasing requirements, defects are quite likely to occur, thus deteriorating the quality of software. More importantly, while a defective component can be easily replaced by a spare part, software has no concept of spare parts. That is precisely why software maintenance is such a complicated task.

Most software is created from scratch - It is not assembled from existing components. If we look at most of the other engineered products, we will find that while manufacturing, efforts are first made to identify various components that go into making each product. They are then put together as per original design.

This approach affords an enormous amount of flexibility. Any number of people could be working independently in producing different components-so the manufacture of one sub-assembly could be entirely independent of another.

Suppose an organization either wants to increase production quantities or decrease the production cycle time, it can easily subcontract some of the jobs. So the final product is merely putting together several independently manufactured components.

In software development unfortunately, the job is not as simple. Most of the time each module is so greatly inter-linked with another and therefore it requires a lot pf skill to segregate them into sub-modules to be handled by different development teams.Further,it also requires a lot of skill to integrate all these components into a cohesive whole and ensure a high quality product.

Inherent Characteristics of Software

Most of the problems related with software product development arise because of its inherent characteristics and if we look at products around us we will find very few , similarities with other products that too are designed and developed

Therefore comparisons to be made are few, if at all. We must then understand the uniqueness of the problems that are faced in software development so that we can tackle them and find appropriate solutions for them.

The focus on the discipline of software engineering is appreciated more if one realizes the uniqueness of the problems that we are trying to deal with. Once we realize this, it becomes easy to understand the importance of quality of software products.