Catalog copy

CS 115. Software Methodology Emphasizes the characteristics of
  well-engineered software systems. Topics include requirements analysis
  and specification, design, programming, verification and validation,
  maintenance, and project management. Practical and research methods
  are studied. Imparts an understanding of the steps used to effectively
  develop computer software. Prerequisite(s): course 104A or 111 or
  180. Enrollment limited to 25. Enrollment limited to senior computer
  science, computer engineering, and information systems management
  majors. L. Werner, J. Whitehead

Explanation of prerequisites
 The prerequisites ensure students have successfully completed a substantial 
 programming assignment prior to taking CS 115.  This gives students better 
 insight into the issues surrounding large-scale software development.

Required skills to pass the course.
1. Understanding of software development processes used to coordinate 
   the activities of team(s) working to develop large software projects
2. Specification of software system requirements
3. User interface prototyping
4. Software design activities and representation
5. Software Verification and Validation
6. Project management fundamentals

Core topics (must be taught)
1. Software development processes
   a. Waterfall software development process
2. Requirements specification, elicitation, analysis, and validation
   a. Techniques for writing precise requirements in natural language.
3. Software Architecture
   a. Software architectural styles
   b. Analysis of software architectures
4. Design
   a. Abstraction, modularity, separation of concerns
   b. Representation of designs using Unified Modeling Lanugage
5. Verification and Validation
   a. Black box and white box definitions and techniques
   b. Control flow diagrams, and all-paths test coverage
   c. Unit test, integration test
   d. System test plans
   e. Software Inspections theory and practice
   f. Software qualities
6. Software development environments
   a. Software configuration management tools
7. Introduction to project management
   a. Time estimation techniques
   b. Use of group meetings and email to coordinate team activities
   c. Monitoring and control of team activities to meet deadlines

Optional topics
1. Software development environments
   a. Automated testing tools
   b. Communication and coordination tools
   c. Static code analysis
   d. Literate programming
2. Reverse engineering
3. Software Reuse
   a. Product line architectures
   b. Organizational technques to foster reuse
4. Software evolution
5. Extreme Programming/Pair Programming
6. Formal specification and modeling
   a. Specification languages and tools

Core lab exercises
1. Working over the entire quarter as a member of a 3-6 person team
   to develop a software project. The project uses a fixed,
   Waterfall-like process divided into major phases:
   a. Requirements specification - using scenarios to identify project
      requirements, and then writing requirements in natural language.
   b. User manual and user interface prototype - writing a description
      of how a person uses the softare, and a paper-based description
      of the project's user interface. Traceability data correlating
      user capabilities with the architecture.
   c. Design - software architecture and detailed design, including
      architecture and UML diagrams, with associated descriptive text.
      Traceability data linking design to requirements.
   d. Risk analysis - description of key project risks, and actions taken
      to mitigate these risks. Time estimate for remaining project phases.
   e. Code and unit test - development of the executable software, and
      fine-grain testing.
   f. Test plan - description of a test plan used to validate the
      software against its requirements. A traceability matrix linking
      tests with specific requirements.
   g. Software inspections - execution of a formal software inspection
      of a portion of the project source code.
   Project work involves multiple face-to-face meetings of team members
   to discuss and coordinate work activities. In-class team presentations
   are used to review progress, and provide design and requirements feedback.

2. Use of Software Configuration Management technology
   a. Use of SCM to coordinate group work activities,
      including use of workspaces, and checkout/checkin

Optional lab exercises
1. Reverse engineering - instead of developing a project from scratch,
   student teams pick an existing open source software project, reverse
   engineer its design, and then modify it.

Comments on follow-on courses
CS 116, Software Design Project, builds on CS 115 by offering a course
on advanced software engineering concepts and techniques.

Text
Traditionally, the textbook for the course has been:
Roger S. Pressman, "Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach",
Fifth Edition, McGraw-Hill, New York, 2001.

In Fall, 2002, the course switched to using a reader, containing a
selection of research papers and selections from textbooks.

Prepared by Jim Whitehead, 10/02; revised 5/03