CSC444: Software engineering I
Fall 2003
Instructors: Homy Dayani-Fard and Mou Hu

Announcements:

You can check you term marks here but your final mark will be available through the undergraduate office.

During this course, there will be a lot of clarifications, suggestions, and changes made to the project description. Students are expected to read the announcements regularly and monitor the appropriate course newsgroups.

You should also read the course newsgroup ut.ecf.csc444 as well as the course project FAQ.

Course objectives and overview

Many software engineering practices may be considered as common sense. However, in practice, as you will experience in your course project, common sense is commonly forgotten. As the pressures of deadline, budget, quality, added/modified functionality add up, people are forced to make trade-offs. Sometimes, these trade-offs are justified, while other times, they are not and their consequences are severe.

This course aims to introduce the students to the field of software engineering and its fundamental challenges. Lectures provide a more theoretical foundation. Their purpose is to intrigue students to investigate in more detail the issues raised. Practical sessions provide a more pragmatic approach to these issues through a small project.

Text book and other reading materials

The course main text book is "Software Engineering: Principles and Practice" by Hans van Vliet, ISBN 0-471-97508-7. Here are other sources that you should consult for more exposure to the topics that we will discuss:

G. Booch, J. Rambaugh, I. Jacobson. "The unified modeling language user guide". Addison-Wesley, 1999, ISBN 0-201-57168-4
E. Gamma, R. Helm, R. Johnson, J. Vlissides, "Design patterns", Addison-Wesley, 1997, ISBN 0-201-63361-2
M. Shaw, D. Garlan. "Software Architecture: Perspectives on an Emerging Discipline". Prentice Hall, 1996, ISBN 0-13-182957-2.
Project Management Institute, "A guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge", 2000 Edition (Check: http://www.pmi.org)
Brooks, Fred. "The mythical man-month", Anniversary edition, Addison-Wesley, 1995, ISBN 0-201-83595-9
H. Watts. "A Software Maturity Framework". Chapter 1 of "Managing the Software Process". Addison-Wesley, 1989.

Course project

Each phase of the project roughly maps to a stage of water-fall model. During each phase students complete one of the phases: requirement specification, design, implementation, testing, and maintenance. Students must work in teams of two or three. Each phase must be treated as a min-project. Students must apply project management principles: initiate, plan, execute, and close.

The result of each phase carries to the next. At the end of the term, each group must submit their complete project diary. You may apply small changes to your previous phases subject to instructor's approval.

The following list contain (or will contain) links to project resources:

Original project description, final project description and Project FAQ Tutorials and practice sessions Tue. Sep. 30

Project phase	Date out	Due date
Phase 1	Tue. Sep. 16	Tue. Sep. 30 at Noon
Phase 2	Tue. Sep. 30	Tue. Oct. 21 at Noon
Phase 3	Tue. Oct. 21	Tue. Nov. 11 at Noon
Phase 4	Thu. Oct. 29	Tue. Nov. 11 at Noon
Phase 5	Tue. Nov. 11	Wed. Dec. 3 at Noon
Presentation and essay.html	Wed. Nov. 5	Nov. 23 at midnight

Presentation requirements
Notes on project management
Notes on 360 degree feedback
Notes on risk management

Finally, each team must provide an executive report and present it to the class during the last weeks of the term. This presentation must focus on what you did, what your challenges were, and what solutions you propose (and why).

Grading

	Weight
Phase 1 plan	1
Phase 1	4
Phase 2 plan, status minutes	1
Phase 2	8
Phase 3 plan, status minutes	2
Phase 3	8
Phase 4 plan	3
Phase 5 plan, status minutes, change management	2
Phase 5	11
Presentation/report	10
Final exam	50

The final exam will take place during official exam period. It will be a closed-book exam.

Lecture schedules

Week of	Lecture	Reading	Event
Sep. 1	No lecture	Chapter 1
Sep. 8	Orientation and introduction	Chapters 2,3.1,5,8	Form teams, sign up for practical session
Sep. 15	Project management and software life cycle	Chapters 3.2,3.3,3.4,9,15.1	Project phase 1 out
Sep. 22	Requirement engineering (cont'd)
Sep. 29	Software modeling, design, and architecture	Chapters 10,11,12.1,12.2, UML distilled	Project phase 1 due, phase 2 out
Oct. 6	Software modeling, design, and architecture (cont'd)
Oct. 13	Software modeling, design, and architecture (cont'd)
Oct. 20	Software implementation	Chapters 4, 13.4, 19.1, 19.2, Unix RCS/CVS	Phase 2 due, phase 3 out
Oct. 27	Software implementation (cont'd)
Nov. 3	Software verification and validation	Chapters 13,15.2,15.4	Phase 4 out
Nov. 10	Software verification and validation (cont'd)		Phase 3, 4 due, phase 5 out
Nov. 17	Software maintenance and evolution	Chapter 14
Nov. 24	Software quality	Chapter 6, Appendix A	Presentations
Dec. 1	Course review		Phase 5 due, presentations