Just Another Teaching of Software Engineering (2006-07)

Revision Class

Steven Choy — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 10:09:02 +0000

Please be reminded that a revision class is scheduled for you on April 4, 2007 at 3:30pm, venue B0614. I will also hand out a specimen exam paper, UML class diagram revision sheets, suggested answers to test questions, and suggested answers to assignment two.

See you there.

Project Contest Closing and Awards Presentation

Steven Choy — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 09:27:58 +0000

The coming Monday (April 2) is the time for praising ourselves for doing such a great job on the Software Project. Three awards will be presented to three teams who did the excellent job in the project. So, don’t miss the chance to share the happiness with our classmates.

I will also tell you something relevant to the project theme that you may not aware of during the project. They are the Long Tail Phenomenon and Information Architecture.

See you there.

Peer Review on Your Project Work

Steven Choy — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 15:03:04 +0000

I thank for your participation and hard work towards the MT356F Software Project Contest (2006/2007). The contest will be closed for assessment exercise on March 26, 2007.

The first part of the assessment is peer-review. You are invited to give votes to at most three projects that you consider them well-done.

Please go to here and fill in the survey form. I will start looking at the responses on March 30, 2007, and get back to you on April 2, 2007.

Important Dates Before Course End

Steven Choy — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 03:58:21 +0000

Time passes quickly and we are approaching to the course end. I would like to remind you the following dates so that you can make a better arrangemnet of your time.

March 26, 2007: Deliver project for assessment exercise. Start course revision.
March 27-29, 2007: Our last tutorial classes
April 2, 2007: Software project closing. Submit Assignment 2 for marking.
April 4, 2007: Revision class (Venue: B0614, Time: 3:30pm).
April 3-5, 2007: No tutorial classes scheduled.
April 5-9, 2007: Easter holiday.
April 10-12, 2007: Our last meetings in Computer Laboratory
April 16-21, 2007: Study weeks before final examination.
April 30, 2007: MT356F final examination.

It has been a good time to be with you in this course. Cheers.

Lecture#19 Other Topics of Software Engineering

Steven Choy — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 02:31:52 +0000

This is our last lecture before the course revision classes. In this lecture, we will discuss a number of topics that do not cover in the textbook. They include:

Software Development Professional - Certification
Software Development Professional - Ethics and Practices
Code Complexity Measurement

The followings links let you probe further for the various topics in this lecture.

Something more that I want to let you konw (maybe good to you):

10 Programming Languages You Should Learn Right Now (by Deborah Rothberg on September 15, 2006)
How to Interview a Programmer (by Bill Venners on February 24, 2003)
Why software sucks (by Scott Berkun on September 19 2005)
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a new delivery model where companies pay not for owning the software itself but for using it. To learn more, go to MSDN Solution Architecture Centre, and Software as Services (ZDNet Blog)

Lecture#18 Software Methodologies

Steven Choy — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 09:11:31 +0000

In this lecture, we will study methodologies as guidance for the project manager to select and customize the methods in software engineering to the specific project environment. A software engineering methodology is a collection of methods, best practices, guidelines, templates and tools for developing and managing a software system. In particular, we will cover the following methodologies:

Royce’s Methodology
Rational Unified Process (RUP)
SSADM
PRINCE2
Extreme Programming (XP)

Your actions before next class: Read Chapter 16 Methodologies: Putting It All Together.

The followings are what I suggest for you to probe further about various topics in this lecture.

Cocomo (Constructive Cost Model) calculation tool
Information about Cocomo calculation
PRINCE2 Overview by OGC of UK
PRINCE2 Introduction by ProjectManagement.net
The following merchandise is the stuff offered by AgileStuff.com. It is supposed to be used by agile software developers to let them show off what they believe in–about good and effective software development practices.

Tutorial#19 Configuration Management Hands-on

Steven Choy — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 05:51:56 +0000

In this tutorial, you will experiment with CVSNT. CVSNT is open-source version control systems available under Windows and other popular platforms.

Useful Links:

Lecture#17 Software Life Cycle

Steven Choy — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 07:37:00 +0000

In this lecture, we will revisit the activities described in previous lectures from the perspective of software life cycle modeling. Software life cycle models enable managers and developers to deal with the complexity of the process of developing software. We will study some well-known software life cycle models that help us better understand, measure, and control the software development process. Those models make the software development activities and their dependencies visible and manageable.

We will also look at the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), which is a well-known method to characterize the maturity of software life cycle models. CMM provides a way to assess the capability of an organization based on its process maturity. The maturity level can be used to predict the outcome of future software projects run by the organization. The CMM also provides a path for an organization to improve its process maturity.

Your actions before next class: Read Chapter 15 Software Life Cycle of the textbook.

Lecture#16 Software Project Management

Steven Choy — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 07:04:07 +0000

The previous lecture covered change management dealing with the managerial aspect of software engineering. In this lecture, we continue with a managerial topic, namely project management. It is possible to devote a whole course to project management. Our treatment on the subject will therefore be quite brief.

We will focus on management of a software project and the role of software project manager. The following lists the main topics in this lecture.

Role of a Project Manager
Project Development Phrases
Project Development Activities
Project Organization
Risk Management

Your actions before next class: Read Chapter 14 Project Management and Chapter 3 Project Organization and Communication of the textbook.

Lecture#15 Software Configuration Management

Steven Choy — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 07:53:45 +0000

In this lecture, we will start to learn Software Configuration Management, or SCM in short. SCM is the discipline of monitoring and controlling change in the evolution of software system. More specifically, you will learn the following concepts and activities in the process of SCM:

Configuration item identification
Promotion management
Release management
Branch management
Variant management
Change management

Your actions before next class: Read Chapter 13 Configuration Management of the textbook.

The following lists seven software configuration management tools. Some of them offer test drive to play with.

Build and release management tools:

IBM Rational Build Forge
Apache Ant: a Java-based build tool