Computer Science 340: Introduction to Software Engineering

Document Title: Course Syllabus

Author: Bob Matthews

Purpose:

This document gives a general outline for the course, discusses prerequisites, and gives a draft schedule for readings and assignments.

Change History

Initial Submission 8/26/04

Administrivia

Meeting times

11:00 - 11:50 MWF
11:30 - 12:20 Tuesday

Please Note: We will not use the Tuesday sessions for class meetings until the later part of September. Please do not arrange other scheduled activities in the Tuesday time periods however, as we will have a use for them later in the term.

Class meets in Thompson 322

Final Exam:

The final exam for this class (meets 11:00 MTWF) is scheduled for 8:00 AM Wednesday, December 15. Instead of an exam, we will use this time for final project presentations. All project material will be due at that time.

Instructor: Bob Matthews

Bob Matthews (email matthews@ups.edu)
Thompson 321B
Extension 3561
Office hours (tentative)
- 2:00 - 2:50 MWF
- Or by appointment.
Email messages are welcome, and can be used to ask a question or to set up an appointment. My schedule is posted here. Hours marked 'open' on my schedule may be available for appointments (to be made in advance). If none of these times work out for you, please send me an email.

Text:

Ian Sommerville: Software Engineering (seventh edition)
- I plan to cover chapters 1 - 23, skipping chapters 9 and 15.
Quatrani, Terry: Visual Modeling with Rational Rose 2002 and UML
- I plan to cover chapters 1 - 9 as demonstrations, but this second book is primarily a reference for you to use. There are also some tutorial resources for Rational Rose.

Prerequisites: At least one 300 level computer science course. It would be helpful to have written at least one program of more than 500 lines (more for COBOL, less for Forth).

Brief course description:

Software Engineering is concerned with long-term programming projects, and can be thought of as the development, care, and feeding of large software systems. This course will be project-oriented and will involve a group project (this link is currently under development). Lectures and the group project will cover topics in software engineering, management, problem specification and analysis, system and program design techniques, testing, and user interface concerns.

Because of the number of topics we must cover, not all topics in all chapters will be discussed in class. I will assign specific sections for you to read. Homework assignments may cover topics not discussed in class.

Some links:

Home page for our textbook. Although we will not be using them in lecture, there is an extensive collection of powerpoint slides on this site that are useful for review.
Rational Rose web site. We will be using the UML (Unified Modeling Language) as implemented in Rational Rose. At one time the site had a powerpoint presentation on Rational Rose that could be downloaded, documentation and a tutorial that you can download and work through. Rational Rose has now been acquired by IBM, so the web site is in a state of change.
Institute for Software Research International
Risks Digest Links:
- http://www.CSL.sri.com/users/risko/risksinfo.html
- http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks

Evaluation:

3 one hour exams: 30%
- Please note: One of these exams will be in the last full week of the term
Assignments: 30%
- Homework will be divided into three chunks:
  - Textbook assignments (to be done individually). These will be assigned each Friday from material covered that week, and will be due on the following Friday. Please note that project documents generally fall due on Fridays as well.
  - Group assignments (with randomly assigned and changing groups), generally larger assignments such as:
    - Requirements analysis and definition exercises either taken from the textbook or from some other source.
    - Design exercises: ER, DFD, OOD, Functional, etc.
    - Other exercises in the UML and Rational Rose and using Viseo2002
    Group exercises will start as in-class exercises and will include short presentations by each group. Students not in class when group exercises are done will be given a separate assignment for partial credit. Group assignments will be announced in the "this week / next week" links above.
Group Project: 40%

Notes:

Programming exercises will be graded on style and documentation as well as correctness. Programs must include header documentation as well as adequate internal documentation unless otherwise specified. Written exercises should be produced on word processing software except (perhaps) for diagrams, which should be produced using either the UML or Visio tools provided or neatly drawn. Late assignments will be accepted (with an increasing penalty) until the graded exercise is returned to the class, but no extension of deadline for the group project can be given. All assignments turned in must represent individual effort: except where a group effort is a clearly stated part of the assignment (as in the group project). All students in Computer Science classes at the University of Puget Sound are responsible for the material contained in the document on academic honesty published by the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science and included in the Academic Handbook (Logger).

I will make every effort to return homework, exams, and project documents a week (or less) after they have been submitted / taken.

Attendance Policies:

Although I do not usually take formal attendance (my reading of names is generally to get to know everyone), this is a project class, and the performance of your group depends on your full participation. Attendance problems in class or lack of participation in your group may result in your removal from the class.

A syllabus for the course can be found here.

The schedule of exams and readings for the course can be found here.

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