CISC 475
Advanced Software Engineering

Fall 2010
Lecture: 220 Smith (SMI), Mon 1900–2200
Lab: 051 McKinly Laboratory (MKL), Wed 1640–1730 or 1800–1850


Instructor: Walt Leipold
E-mail: leipold@udel.edu
Office: 441 Smith
Office hours: Mon 1730–1845
Web: http://www.cis.udel.edu/~leipold
  Teaching Assistant: Josh Kirby
E-mail: jothki@gmail.com
Office: TBD
Office hours: TBD

This is the Web page for CISC475, “Advanced Software Engineering”. It contains announcements, policies, and other pertinent material for the course. The page will be updated frequently—plan on checking for new or updated material at least twice a week.


About the course

CISC475 presents an introduction to object-oriented software engineering concepts, methodologies and tools. It covers the analysis, specification, design, and implementation of software systems using object-oriented development processes including the Unified Process and UML. The course includes a semester-long team development project using the techniques discussed in class.


Textbook

Ghezzi software engineering book cover

Fundamentals of Software Engineering
2nd Edition
Carlo Ghezzi
ISBN: 0133056996


Class schedule

The following class schedule is preliminary—it will almost certainly change as the semester progreses.

Class Date Topics Activities Reading
1 13 Sep Intro to software engineering
Career Center presentation
   
2 20 Sep Unified Process
Requirements analysis
   
3 27 Sep UP artifacts Project preview presentations  
4 4 Oct Domain model
UP artifacts
First submission
Honors presentation 1
 
5 11 Oct More UP artifacts
Software architecture
Architectural patterns
Software testing
First presentation  
6 18 Oct Capability Maturity Model
Software maintenance
Coupling & cohesion
   
7 25 Oct Design patterns
Review for midterm
2nd submission
Honors presentation 2
 
8 1 Nov   Midterm exam  
9 8 Nov More design patterns
More UP artifacts
2nd presentation  
10 15 Nov Refactoring
Software architecture revisited
Antipatterns
3rd submission  
11 22 Nov Distributed architectures
Planning & estimating
   
12 29 Nov Review for final Honors presentation 3  
13 6 Dec   Final submission
Final presentation
 
14 13 Dec   Final exam  

Semester project

A major part of this course consists of a semester-long team project. Each team will analyze, design, and build a significant software system using the Unified Process, and will deliver a complete set of UP artifacts (use cases, domain model, sequence diagrams, operation contracts, and so forth) along with the operating software.

Projects will be implemented in Java, and will target either cross-platform desktop development (Windows/MacOS/Linux) or the Android smartphone operating system.

Project topic: The project can be a productivity application, simulation, programming utility, game, or whatever, as long as it is:

In general, an acceptable project is one that supports multiple business functions, ideally for multiple types or classes of users. Requirements analysis and design for such a project will be more challenging than for a single-user, single function application (like a Solitaire game or an MP3 player).

Some possible project ideas are:

Team member roles: Each team will consist of between four and seven students. Each student must have at least one well-defined role on the team. Part of each student's grade will be based on how well he carries out his declared role(s). Each team must have a team leader, but the other roles will depend on the team's task. Some typical roles might be:

Project tools: You must follow the Unified Process for this project, and deliver a number of UP artifacts. Your grade will be influenced by how well you adopt and use real software engineering tools, such as:

Presentations: Each team will make a formal presentation of its progress to the class at three points through the semester. At the second presentation, you will be expected to demonstrate major parts of your code. At the final presentation, you will demonstrate your complete application, and allow the instructor to “test drive” its functionality.

Submissions: Each team will submit a set of UP artifacts at four milestones through the semester. For all four submissions, you will submit all of your UP artifacts on paper. This will allow the TA and instructor to mark up the submissions when grading. At the fourth milestone, you will submit all UP artifacts, source code, build/test/install scripts, README files, installation instructions, and other documents on CD-ROM. (See below for details.) The organization and professionalism of these submissions, and the ease with which the instructor can get your code running from them, will affect your grade.

The following Unified Process artifacts must be included in each submission:

  1. Vision, Use Cases, Supplementary Specification, and Glossary.
  2. Domain Model and System Sequence Diagram(s)
  3. Specification and design documents: System Architecture Document, Operation Contracts, and Design Class Diagram
  4. Package Diagram, Deployment Diagram, project source code, .class files, javadoc files, installation scripts, installation instructions, help files, test scaffolding, etc.

Because the Unified Process is an iterative development process, artifacts will evolve throughout the project. Therefore, each submission must also include revised, updated versions of artifacts from all previous submissions.

3rd-party components: With the approval of the instructor, teams may use third-party libraries (for example, the Rhino JavaScript engine, the Hibernate object/relational persistence framework, the XStream XML serializer, the ANTLR parser generator, or the JFreeChart plotting package) as components in their projects. Except for such approved components, the code and documentation developed in this course must be the new, original work of the project team members.


Final presentation

Final project presentations will be held in 048 Memorial Hall on Monday, December 6th, with the first presentation starting at 1900. The classroom will be open starting at 1830 to allow you to stage and test your equipment. Attendance at all presentations is mandatory for all students in all teams.

Each member of each team must introduce himself (not just be introduced by the team leader), and should make some part of the presentation. The instructor will take a photograph of each team.

Each presentation should take about 55 minutes, including setup/teardown and question/answer. Do at least one dress rehearsal of your presentation to make sure that everyone knows his part and that it will take about that amount of time.

Here are some examples of the things a good presentation will cover:

You can't cover all of these areas thoroughly in 55 minutes, so you'll have to choose the areas to emphasize that are most likely to impress the instructor, the TA, and faculty observers.


Final submission

Final project submissions are due at the beginning of class (7:00PM) on 7th December. The submission will consist of both printed and machine-readable versions.

The printed submission must contain all project artifacts plus a table of contents, arranged as a single document with sequential page numbers. Do not include source or Javadoc printouts. The submission should be stapled together (no loose pages), should be printed single-sided, and should not contain any hand-drawn pictures.

The machine-readable version should be submitted on CD-ROM. It must contain:

The readme.txt file should be at the root of the disk. It should describe the organization of the submission. It must contain instructions for building and running your system, including detailed instructions for downloading, installing, and configuring any 3rd-party components necessary.

Organize the files into a reasonable and functional directory hierarchy. The instructor should be able simply to copy the CD contents to hard disk, update CLASSPATH, and run Ant to build your application or run JUnit.

If the submission includes any Microsoft Office documents, they must be readable in Office 2003 or OpenOffice.org 2.0. If your electronic submissions were in PDF format, you must include the source documents (LaTex, Word, OpenOffice, etc.) as well.


Exams

The midterm exam will cover all lectures, all reading assignments, and anything else discussed in any class prior to the exam date. It will probably include an extra-credit problem.

The final examination will cover all lectures, all chapters from the textbook, and anything else discussed in any class. It will probably include an extra-credit problem.


Grading

Grades for the semester will be based on:

Midterm exam:   20% of final grade
Final exam:   25% of final grade
Semester project:   50% of final grade
Attendance and participation:   5% of final grade

Each student's project grade will be a combination of the group grade and an individual grade.


Policies

Exams: The course will include two exams, a midterm and a final. The lectures will introduce material not covered in the textbook, and this additional material will be on the exams. Exams will be closed-book.

Late assignments: There are no homework assignments (other than the project) in this course. There are four delivery milestones for components of the project, which must be met. No credit will be given for project materials turned in late.

Academic integrity: You will be expected to conform to the University's policy on academic integrity.

Grades by e-mail: The University has a strong policy on protecting PNPI (Personal Non-Public Information), and treats your grades as private, sensitive data. You may request that your grades for work in this class be sent to you via e-mail, but you are hereby warned that e-mail transmission is not secure and your grades may be visible to third parties.


Resources

Here are some recommended books:

Effective Java book cover
Effective Java
Programming Language Guide

Joshua Bloch
ISBN: 0201310058
  Unit Testing in Java book cover
Unit Testing In Java:
How Tests Drive the Code

Johannes Link
ISBN: 1558608680
Pragmatic Programmer book cover
The Pragmatic Programmer:
From Journeyman to Master

Andrew Hunt & David Thomas
ISBN: 020161622X
  The PC is Not a Typewriter book cover
The PC is Not a Typewriter
Robin Williams
ISBN: 0938151495

Last modified: Friday, 3 Dec 2010