Software Engineering

Introduction to
Software Engineering
Course Outline

• To understand the process of designing, building, and maintaining software

systems.

• To acquire the skill of software project management.

• To understand software evolution, testing approaches and quality assurance

to ensure high standard/professional software

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Software Engineering

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What is Software Engineering
• Engineering discipline that is concerned with all aspects of software
production.
– Design
– Development
– Maintenance

• There are various types of software systems

• embedded systems
• complex, worldwide information systems
• Different types of software require different approaches
• Every software require software engineering; but not the same technique

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Importance of Software
Engineering?
The importance of Software engineering is as follows:

– Reduces complexity
– Minimizes software cost
– Decreases time
– Handles big projects
– Reliable software
– Effectiveness

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Required Tasks in Software
Engineering?
• Software engineering task requires:

Ability to quickly learn new and diverse disciplines and business processes
Ability to communicate with domain experts, extract an abstract model of the
problem, and formulate a solution.
Ability to design the software systems for the proposed solution to meet the business
needs for many years.

• Software Engineer’s task: understand the customer’s business needs and

design software accordingly.

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The Role of Software
Engineering

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The Role of Software
Engineering

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 The Role of Software
Engineering (SE)
Some Misconceptions:
▪ Software engineering is all about Programming
▪ Software engineering is about writing loads of documentation
▪ Software engineering is about writing a running code

•SE is the creative activity of understanding the business problems, coming up with an idea
for solution, and designing the ‘blueprints’ of the solution.
•Programming is the ability of implementing the given blueprints
•SE is helpful to document the process (not the final solution) to know what alternatives were
considered and why particular choice were made.
•SE is about delivering value for the customer, and both code and documentation are
valuable.

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Introduction: Software is
Complex
Complex ≠ Complicated

• Complex = composed of many simple components

related to one another

• Complicated = refers to a high level of difficulty

Complexity Example:
Scheduling Fence Construction
Tasks

Nailing Painting
Setting posts Cutting wood
[ 2 time units for unpainted; [ 5 time units for uncut wood;
[ 3 time units ] [ 2 time units ]
3 time units otherwise ] 4 time units otherwise ]

Setting posts < Nailing,

Painting
Cutting <
Nailing

In what order should these tasks be carried out to complete the project
in the shortest possible time?

[ ⇒ “simple” problem, but hard to solve without a pen and paper 11

Example: ATM Machine
Understanding the money-machine problem:

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 How ATM Machine Might Work
Domain model
created with help
of domain expert

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Cartoon Strip: How ATM
Machine Works

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Software Engineering Lifecycle
• Any product development process includes the following phases:
• Planning/specification

• Design
• Implementation
• Evaluation

• The common software development phases are:

• Requirement specification - Understanding the usage scenarios
• Design - Assigning responsibilities to objects
• Implementation - Encoding design in a programming language
• Testing - Individual component (unit) and the entire system (integration)
• Operation and Maintenance - running the systems, fixing bugs, adding new features

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Software Development Methods
Waterfall – Activities are proceed in a sequential manner, not practical

Iterative Waterfall Model - allows the mechanism of error correction, not

suitable for very large projects

Iterative + Incremental (Evolutionary) - suitable for large projects,

decomposed into a set of modules. Develop increment of functionality in each
iteration

Agile - an iterative approach, requires customer feedback after each Time-box.

The end date of an iteration is fixed

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Waterfall Method

proceeds sequentially
finish this step before moving to the next
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Modeling Languages
• Modeling is the designing of software applications before coding.
• Modeling is an Essential Part of large software projects, and helpful to
medium and even small projects as well.

• There are several modelling languages:

– UML (Unified Modeling Language)
– Activity diagram
– Use case diagram

– Sequence diagram

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UML – Language of Symbols
UML = Unified Modeling Language

Online information:
http://www.uml.org
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Requirements Analysis and
System Specification
• Requirement analysis is the first step of software development process.

• Developer attempts to understand the problem and define its scope.

• Goal: Produce system specification
– what the system will do
– how the system will interact with the external players

▪ Actors - Agents external to the system

▪ Concepts/ Objects - Agents working inside the system

▪ Use Cases – describes the interaction between the System and Actors

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ATM: Gallery of Players

Actors (Easy to identify because they are visible!)

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Gallery of Workers + Things

Concepts (Hard to identify because they are invisible/imaginary!) 22

Use Case: Withdraw Cash

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Domain Model
• Models the inside of the system.

• Design problems have unlimited number of alternative solutions

❖ having a draftsman to draw the banknotes requested by the customer
❖ we imagine having a courier run to a nearest bank depository to retrieve the requested
money

Which solution is the best or even feasible?

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 How ATM Machine Works (2)
Domain Model (2)

Alternative
solution
 How ATM Machine Works (3)
Domain Model (3)

Alternative
solution
Software Design
Recurring issues of software design include:
– Design quality evaluation
– Design for change
– Design for reuse

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Effort Estimation and Quality
measurement
Formal hedge pruning

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Sizing the Problem (1)
Step 1: Divide the problem into small & similar parts

Step 2:
Estimate relative
sizes of all parts
Size( ①)=4
Size( ② ) = 7
Size( ③ ) = 10
Size( ④ ) = 3
Size( ⑤ ) = 4
Size( ⑥ ) = 2
Size( ⑦ ) = 4
Size( ⑧ ) = 7
Sizing the Problem (2)
• Step 3: Estimate the size of the total work

Total size = Σ points-for-section i (i = 1..N)

• Step 4: Estimate speed of work (velocity)

• Step 5: Estimate the work duration

Travel duration = Path size

Travel velocity
Effort Estimation of Incremental
and Iterative Process

❖ After the first iteration you can use the measured velocity to obtain a more
accurate estimate of the project duration 31
Sizing the Problem (3)
• Advantages:
– Velocity estimate may need to be adjusted (based on
observed progress)
– However, the total duration can be computed quickly
(provided that the relative size estimates of parts are
accurate – easier to achieve if the parts are small and
similar-size)
Exponential Cost of Estimation
100
%

Estimation
accuracy

Estimation cost

❑ Improving accuracy of estimation beyond a certain point requires huge cost

and effort (known as the law of diminishing returns)
❑ In the beginning of the curve, a modest effort investment yields huge gains in
accuracy
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Estimation Error Over Time

Estimation
error

Requirement Desig Implementatio

s n n
Star Completio Time
t n

The cone of uncertainty starts high and narrows down to zero

as the project approaches completion.
Measuring Quality of Work

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Summary

1. Incremental and iterative strategy helps in quick and more

accurate effort estimation

2. Improves the development process quality

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 Conceptual Maps
Concept maps are graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge and
concepts. Represented by:
▪ circles or boxes of some type, and
▪ relationships between the concepts are connected by lines linking two
concepts.

How to construct a concept map:

•Establish a main concept or idea, topic, or issue to focus on

•Identify related concepts
•Connect the concepts - creating linking phrases and words
•Fine-tune the map

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 Conceptual Maps
Useful tool for problem domain description

SENTENCE: “My friend is coding a new program”

translated into propositions

Proposition Concept Relation Concept

1. I have friend
2. friend engages in coding
3. coding constructs a program
4. program is new

Search the Web for Concept Maps

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Conceptual Maps

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Conceptual Maps

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Conceptual Maps

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Conceptual Maps

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Concept Map for Home Access
Control

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 Conceptual Maps
Benefits of Concept Mapping

•Help for brainstorming and generating new ideas

•Encourage to discover new concepts and the propositions that

connect them

•Allow to more clearly communicate ideas, thoughts and information

•Help to integrate new concepts with older concepts

•Help to gain enhanced knowledge of any topic and evaluate the

information
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 Practicing!!!

Draw a Concept Map for MIST

admission process

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