Microsoft office was introduced in the year nineteen eighty nine, it first was first introduced to run on Mac Operating system which is an operating system that runs on apple computers. The office version for windows operating system was introduced in the year nineteen ninety. Microsoft office generally had three applications which included; Microsoft PowerPoint, word and Microsoft Excel. Later on Microsoft company released another version which apart from the three initial applications, it had 2 extra applications which were Microsoft Access and Microsoft Schedule Plus (Granor 2005).
Microsoft Access was introduced to satisfy users’ requirement of recording and maintaining a large set of related data while Schedule Plus satisfied users need easily recording events. In order for Microsoft to come up with quality office suite package it follows a systematic procedure which includes processes like; conceptualization i. e. coming up with a prelude vision of the functionality of products to be developed, based on what the market is and definition of t customer problems that are to be addressed, cost benefit analysis, detailed specification of customers and coming up with improved design of the application packages.
These steps have enabled them come up with later versions of application packages that are more efficient and satisfies the customer’s needs; continuous testing and maintenance of previous releases are also other procedures that ensures release of quality office suite. Some of the features added in the office applications include, common spell checker, OLE data integration and Microsoft Visual Basic (Granor 2005).The first office suite version was Microsoft office 3. 0, Microsoft 4. 0 was later released in the year nineteen ninety four and had the following components; Word 6. 0, Excel 5.
, PowerPoint 4. 0, Mail, and Access. Microsoft office 4. 3 version was later released and had had inclusion of improved features that were not available in the previous versions. Microsoft office 1995 had improved version, Word 7.
0, Excel 7. 0, PowerPoint 7. 0, and Schedule+ 7. 0. Microsoft Office 97 (Office 8. 0) included many new features and improvements, the features included "Command Bars" a prototype where menus and toolbars were prepared with additional built in ability and visual plan.
Office 97 also had new features such as ordinary words systems and refined syntax checking.Microsoft Office 2000 had new features like adaptive menus, a new safety attribute that was made with digital signatures that defended applications from the threat of macro viruses. Microsoft Office, was introduced together with the release of windows XP operating system, it had enormous changes and additions, some of the additions included safe mode feature which enabled applications such as outlook to boot in cases where it may have failed to boot, Safe Mode also allowed Office to spot and fix or avoid the foundation a setback. Another added feature was Smart tag.Smart tags run based a consumer doings e.
g. they can help in identifying users errors when a user is typing. Smart tags were only applicable in word and excel applications; another Microsoft Office XP feature was the incorporated tone control and script notation abilities, as well as handwriting identification. Microsoft Office 2003 which was introduced in 2003 added two new applications; Microsoft InfoPath and OneNote.
Microsoft office 2003 also had an improved Outlook package which provided improved functionality. Microsoft Office 2007 is the latest version and that was introduced in the year 2007.Its new features include Groove which is a shared software application, new graphical user interface known as Fluent User Interface which has replaced the menus and toolbars (Granor 2005). The office suite package has been able to cater for the rising needs of users this is because its developers carry out an extensive market research on what the users needs are and then incorporating the users needs into a design that enables programming of the applications to be easy, it is important to note that all this is achieved through continuous testing and maintenance of predecessor applications (Granor 2005).
Office Suite package Development The development of office suite application package will involve a series of seven steps: Conceptualization: At this stage the needs of the customer are gathered based on how the user will expect the system to function e. g. in the case of office suite the customer may want word application package to output words on the visual display unit that he utters rather than key the words through a keyboard. The key point involved in this step is to clearly understand the needs of a customer (Fantina 2005).Requirement cost/ benefit analysis: Once the requirements of the customer have been figured out, there will be the evaluation of the cost and benefit of implementing the requirements of the customer to the existing office suite platform.
Office suite requirement analysis: At this stage, the developer tries to comprehend the nature of the new office suite to be built; the developer must comprehend the information area for the office suite, as well as essential functions, routine and interfacing.From existing information the developer will develop a record of the actors who in this case will be the users of the office suite, and use cases which refers to the actions that will be performed by the users on the office suite. With the assistance of a use case, the user requirements will be reviewed, polished and reorganized in a repetitive fashion until the point at which the customer will be content that the office suite satisfies his needs (Fantina 2005).Office suite analysis and design: At this stage the developer will design the implementation of the specifications of the office suite; the design will define in details on how the office suite will be written with an addition of an object model which has attributes and methods of each object. Office suite code generation: At this point the design of the office suite will be transformed into a series of programming statements.
This stage will involve the real coding of the whole office suite application package; provided that the design stage was done in appropriate manner then coding of the office suite application will be easy (Fantina 2005). Testing of the office suite application : The main aim of testing is to test if there are errors in the office suite code. This is done before releasing it to the market, thus the office suite functionality will be tested in terms of rightness, routine and usability.Office suite maintenance: This is a continuous process, the maintenance stage will involve the following procedures; technical support, training, and provision of office suite updates when necessary (Fantina 2005). Conclusion The software development method that has been used to develop is the system development life cycle (SDLC) waterfall model.
It consists of a series of seven steps; conceptualization, requirements cost/benefit analysis, requirement analysis, system analysis and design, code generation, system testing and lastly system maintenance. Each step defines processes that are carried out to ensure that the system produced is up to standard. The main reason for using the SDLC method is that it makes the development of the system easier as the preceding steps define and assist the next developing step.
