• News:
  22/10/2007 added links for IEEE Software Engineering standards, and print version of slides for ch. 7. Assessment section includes a submission upload link.
  19/10/2007 shared lectures to both campuses completed (again...).
  5/10/2007 assignment 3 released.
  21/9/2007 main Cairns lectures completed, all support materials on-line for assignment 2 and submissions time-line updated;
  20/9/2007 assignment 2 released.

• Materials:
  • Week 1: the subject outline provides weekly timing for the subject.
    • Note: The subject outlines contains the subject's assessment breakdown. However, if you make a significant contribution to leadership for your team, you may be able to negotiate a change to your individual assessment schedule. Similarly, if your team comes up with an innovative outcome that is relevant to technical aims, this might also justify a modified assessment schedule.
    • Motivation: Please review some of the articles on project failures in the Resources section.
    • We have a new text: "Fundamentals of Software Engineering", Carlo Ghezzi, Mehdi Jazayeri, and Dino Mandrioli, 2nd edition, PEARSON 2002. ISBN: 013099183X. The first 3 weeks use material from a variety of sources.

  • Week 2: Group work
    • Discussion of teams relates to this material from Chapter 4 of Object-Oriented and Classical Software Engineering (Schach);
    • Discussion of leadership was based on these leadership topics;
    • For an idea of where (campus, subjects, ...) leadership might be taught at JCU, see this google search link;
    • For an interesting article exploring use and misuse of structure and roles (and an emphasis on "small/simple is best"), see Rethinking Application Design by Dirk Knemeyer.

  • Week 3: Refactoring
    • These Refactoring Notes provide a brief motivation, links to very useful resources including presentation slides (used with permission), a reading guide for chapter 1 of Refactoring - Improving The design Of Existing Code by Martin Fowler (ISBN 0-201-48567-2), and links to refactoring thumbnails;
    • See also the reference section.

  • Week 4: Estimation
    • Lectures: Chapter 8 of Fundamentals of Software Engineering;
    • Reference for Function Point Analysis: Function Point Training Manual from Longstreet Consulting (original site);
    • Handout (6 slides/page): ch. 8.

  • Week 5: Software Nature and Qualities
    • Lectures: Chapter 2 of Fundamentals of Software Engineering;
    • Handout (6 slides/page): ch. 2.

  • Week 6: Software Engineering Principles
    • Lectures: Chapter 3 of Fundamentals of Software Engineering (will most likely spill over into chapter 4);
    • Handout (6 slides/page): ch. 3.

  • Weeks 7 and 8: Design and Software Architecture
    • Lectures: Chapter 4 of Fundamentals of Software Engineering;
    • Handout (6 slides/page): ch. 4.

  • Weeks 9-11: Specification, Verification, The Software Production Process
    • Chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Fundamentals of Software Engineering;
    • The video feeds of week 9 lectures changes to Townsville->Cairns for "Specification". We have already done topics in restructuring/refactoring and team structure/management (and leadership) so will peel off separately at the end, to boost project work and presentations for week 14;
    • The video feeds of week 10,11 lectures revert to Cairns->Townsville for "Verification" and "The Software Production Process";
    • Handout (6 slides/page): ch. 5,ch. 6,ch. 7;
    • As noted in lectures, there exists a rather large number of IEEE software engineering standards that include templates for planning. A list is included at the bottom of this IEEE standards collection. Standards are often being reviewed as noted in this list of standards and draft publications. [these links confirmed 22-Oct-2007]
      The text that I mentioned as including an overview and introduction to design documents from the IEEE standards is On Time Within Budget by E.M. Bennatan (details can be found in my text list).

  • Week 12: Group Presentation
    • Please see the Project Presentation and Audit materials below.

  • Week 13-14: Completion
    • Week 13 has no classes. You might review the assessment criteria and also review the comments on coding style from previous years (see Resources).
    • Week 14 involves audits and the final group presentations.

• Assessment:

  • Here is a quick link to my web-based upload tool - after uploading an assignment zip archive, please email me about it.

  • Overview and Time Line

  • Refactoring - assignment 1;
  • Cost estimation - assignment 2 (please note that the cp3110 wiki contains answers to Schach questions without individual scaling factors, which allows you to check your methods);
  • New Development - assignment 3 (involves some development with testing);

  • Project Presentation and Audit:
    • these seminar/presentation notes (pdf) are to help your group (or individual) presentations (printing versions with 4 slides/page as pdf and gzip-compressed postscript);
    • these group seminar notes suggest how to organise your speakers;
    • the Seminar Marking Guide explains what we are looking for.

  • The audit will be done after the presentations. These notes give you an idea of the audit.

  • Subject Review - includes the optional Group Self Assessment Sheet.

• Resources:
  • Some notes on Coding Style - written after I marked coding assignments in December 2006. I have now added links for improved coding style and coding guidelines to my programming notes web page.
  • Agile Testing, Google Tech Talks, 9 December 2005, by Elisabeth Hendrickson who thinks "testing is fun ... and so exciting"! (youtube)
  • Agile Estimation part 1 and part 2, google talk, 20 March 2007, by Mike Cohn who founded Mountain Goat Software. (youtube)
  • Why Software Fails by Robert N. Charette - this IEEE Spectrum Magazine Feature (September 2005) discusses why "We waste billions of dollars each year on entirely preventable mistakes". Definitely worth a read.
  • The Exterminators by Philip E. Ross - this IEEE Spectrum Magazine Feature (September 2005) discusses how "A small British firm shows that software bugs aren't inevitable". Worth reading.
  • Agile Modelling home page.
  • Eclipse - open development platform.
  • Tutorial notes for 2006;
  • For other details such as tutorials and group collaborative work, login to the student wiki page for cp3110.

• 2006 Archive:
  • The subject handouts are the slides used from Schach over 10 weeks (single 4MB cp3110_handouts.zip for easy download).
  • Assessment Items:
    • Overview and time line;
    • Refactoring assignment;
    • Unit testing assignment;
    • Estimation and review;

• 2006 subject review: The following suggestions have resulted from my consideration of how we went in 2006 plus thoughtful input from students:
  • This year, we had only 2 group members who were given alternative assignments after their work for their group was terminated or, through mutual agreement, made separate. I found that this year's team leaders took great care in handling these situations;
  • We need some milestones (or partial assessment submission points) during the semester so as to push progress earlier and help group managers or team leaders put pressure on group members who need it;
  • There were two common suggestions for the pre-requisite subject CP3120. It needs to test its software development tools more thoroughly (I have asked Bannon and Jason to publish and demonstrate a test suite no later than middle February 2007), and it must be made to rely on unit testing (students reflected on our use of unit testing and state that it would have improved their earlier work immensely).
  • A couple of students suggest that no one in CP3110 should be allowed to inherit the same code base that they had in CP3120, on the grounds of fairness. I expect this change would make team progress more difficult but acknowledge that it makes 100% sense as far as fairness is concerned. At this stage (late 2006), I am inclined to suggest this for adoption in 2007. We would simply have to deal with any complications at start up e.g. teams might hire an exchange advisor from another team to give them an introductory talk (this doubles as practice in presentation work).
  • I am grateful that so many of you enjoyed the personal growth aspect from handling diverse roles. As one student summed up the difficulties that he had with group member performance and unexpected technical issues ... such is life (I admit to paraphrasing this in a convict style).

• 2005 Background: In 2005 semester 2, the Cairns campus was the first to run CP3120 (OOD+A, patterns) prior to CP3110 (software engineering methodologies). Therefore, our CP3110 reflects this new delivery order.

  In 2006, we in Cairns are trying a new student driven version of this subject with an approach that is similar to CP3047 and an optimised scheduling of our new workshops from 2005.

  In CP3120, we in Cairns champion the iterative refinement development method of the unified process with insight/inspiration for object oriented design taken from the Larman text (and in some of our pasts, actual training from Rational Corp). In CP3110, we in Cairns champion refactoring and unit testing while providing an overview of various competing and/or complementary software engineering methods and processes.

• Text:
  • Fundamentals of Software Engineering, Carlo Ghezzi, Mehdi Jazayeri, and Dino Mandrioli, 2nd edition, PEARSON 2002. ISBN: 013099183X.

• Reference Texts:
  • On Time, Within Budget - Software Project Management Practices and Techniques, E.M. Bennatan, 3rd edition, John Wiley and Sons, 2000. ISBN 0-471-37644-2.
  • APPLYING UML AND PATTERNS - An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and the Unified Process, Craig Larman, 3rd edition, Prentice Hall, published Oct 20, 2004. ISBN: 0131489062
  • Object-Oriented and Classical Software Engineering, Steve Schach, 6th edition, McGraw-Hill, 2005. ISBN: 0-07-111191-3 (on the back cover of the paperback) and 0-07-286551-2 (from the text title page inside, probably for the hard cover version).

• Important Refactoring References:
  • Martin Fowler articles (Author of Refactoring - Improving The Design Of Existing Code, ISBN 0-201-48567-2);
  • Sven Gorts and Philippe T'Seyen agile methodologies site (founders of the yahoo agile articles group with text/mp3 content).

Oct 31 2007