Chapter 1

What is Software
Engineering?

Abdisalam Issa-Salwe

Department of Computer Science

Faculty of Information Science and Technology
East Africa University
Shari L. Pledger and Joanne M. Atlee (2014): Software Engineering: Theory and Practice, 4th Edition

Contents
1.1 What is Software Engineering?
1.2 How Successful Have We Been?
1.3 What Is Good Software?
1.4 Who Does Software Engineering?
1.5 A System Approach
1.6 An Engineering Approach
1.7 Members of the Development Team
1.8 How Has Software Engineering Changed?
1.9 Information System Example
1.10 Real Time Example
1.11 What this Chapter Means for You

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Objectives
 What we mean by software engineering
 Software engineering’s track record
 What we mean by good software
 Why a system approach is important
 How software engineering has changed since
1970s

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

1.1 What is Software Engineering

Solving Problems

 Software products are large and complex

 Development requires analysis and synthesis
 Analysis: decompose a large problem into
smaller, understandable pieces
 abstraction is the key

 Synthesis: build (compose) a software from

smaller building blocks
 composition is challenging

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1.1 What is Software Engineering
Solving Problems (cont...)
 The analysis process

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

1.1 What is Software Engineering

Solving Problems (cont...)
 The synthesis process

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1.1 What is Software Engineering
Solving Problems (cont...)
 Method: refers to a formal procedure; a formal
“recipe” for accomplishing a goal that is typically
independent of the tools used
 Tool: an instrument or automated system for
accomplishing something in a better way
 Procedure: a combination of tools and
techniques to produce a product
 Paradigm: philosophy or approach for building a
product (e.g., OO vs. structured approaches)

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

1.1 What is Software Engineering

Where Does the Software Engineer Fit In?

 Computer science: focusing on computer

hardware, compilers, operating systems, and
programming languages
 Software engineering: a discipline that uses
computer and software technologies as a
problem-solving tools

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1.1 What is Software Engineering
Where Does the SW Engineer Fit in? (cont...)

 Relationship between computer science and

software engineering

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

1.2 How Successful Have We Been?

Sidebar 1.1 Terminology for Describing Bugs
 A fault: occurs when a human makes a mistake,
called an error, in performing some software
activities
 A failure: is a departure from the system’s
required behaviour

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1.3 What Is Good Software?
Sidebar 1.2 Perspective on Quality
 The transcendental view: quality is something
we can recognize but not define
 The user view: quality is fitness for purpose
 The manufacturing view: quality is
conformance to specification
 The product view: quality tied to inherent
product characteristics
 The value-based view: depends on the amount
the customers is willing to pay for it

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

1.3 What is Good Software?

 Good software engineering must always include a
strategy for producing quality software
 Three ways of considering quality
 The quality of the product
 The quality of the process
 The quality of the product in the context of the
business environment

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 1.3 What Is Good Software?
The Quality of the Product
 Users judge external characteristics (e.g.,
correct functionality, number of failures, type of
failures)
 Designers and maintainers judge internal
characteristics (e.g., types of faults)
 Thus different stakeholders may have different
criteria
 Need quality models to relate the user’s external
view to developer’s internal view

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

1.3 What Is Good Software?

The Quality of the Product (cont...)

McCall’s quality model

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1.3 What Is Good Software?
The Quality of the Process
 Quality of the development and maintenance
process is as important as the product quality
 The development process needs to be modeled
 Modeling will address questions such as
 Where to find a particular kind of fault
 How to find faults early
 How to build in fault tolerance
 What are alternative activities

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

1.3 What Is Good Software?

The Quality in the Context of the Business Environment

 Business value is as important as technical

value
 Business value (in relationship to technical
value) must be quantified
 A common approach: return on investment
(ROI) – what is given up for other purposes
 ROI is interpreted in different terms: reducing
costs, predicting savings, improving productivity,
and costs (efforts and resources)

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1.3 What Is Good Software?
The Quality of the Context of the Business Environment
 Industry’s definition of ROI

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

1.4 Who Does Software Engineering?

 Customer: the company, organization, or

person who pays for the software system
 Developer: the company, organization, or
person who is building the software system
 User: the person or people who will actually use
the system

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1.4 Who Does Software Engineering?
(cont...)
 Participants (stakeholders) in a software
development project

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

1.5 System Approach

 Hardware, software, interaction with people
 Identify activities and objects
 Define the system boundary
 Consider nested systems, systems
interrelationship

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1.5 System Approach
The Element of a System
 Activities and objects
 An activity is an event initiated by a trigger
 Objects or entities are the elements involved
in the activities
 Relationships and the system boundaries
 A relationship defines the interaction among
entities and activities
 System boundaries determine the origin of
input and destinations of the output

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

1.5 System Approach

The Element of a System (cont...)
 Example of systems: a human respiratory system

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1.5 System Approach
The Element of a System (cont...)
 A computer system must also be clearly
described: System definition of a paycheck
production

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

1.5 System Approach

Interrelated Systems
 Some systems are dependent to other systems
 The interdependencies may be complex
 It is possible for one system to exist inside
another system
 If the boundary definitions are detailed, building
a larger system from the smaller ones is
relatively easy

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1.5 System Approach
Interrelated Systems (cont...)
 A layered system

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1.6 Engineering Approach

Building a System

 Requirement analysis and definition

 System design
 Program design
 Writing the programs
 Unit testing
 Integration testing
 System testing
 System delivery
 Maintenance

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1.7 Members of the Development Team

 Requirement analysts: work with the customers to

identify and document the requirements
 Designers: generate a system-level description of what
the system is supposed to do
 Programmers: write lines of code to implement the
design
 Testers: catch faults
 Trainers: show users how to use the system
 Maintenance team: fix faults that show up later
 Librarians: prepare and store documents such as
software requirements
 Configuration management team: maintain
correspondence among various artefacts

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

1.7 Members of the Development Team

(cont...)
 Typical roles played by the members of a
development team

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1.8 How Has Software Engineering Changed?
The Nature of the Change
 Before 1970s
 Single processors: mainframes
 Designed in one of two ways
 as a transformation: input was converted
to output
 as a transaction: input determined which
function should be performed
 After 1970s
 Run on multiple systems
 Perform multi-functions

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

1.8 How Has SE Changed?

Wasserman's Seven Key Factors (cont...)

 The key factors that have changed the software

development

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1.8 How Has SE Changed?
Wasserman's Discipline of Software Engineering

 Abstractions
 Analysis and design methods and notations
 User interface prototyping
 Software architecture
 Software process
 Reuse
 Measurement
 Tools and integrated environments

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

1.8 How Has SE Changed?

Abstraction
 A description of the problem at some level of
generalization
 Hide details

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1.8 How Has SE Changed?
Analysis and Design Methods and Notations
 Provide documentation
 Facilitate communication
 Offer multiple views
 Unify different views

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

1.8 How Has SE Changed?

User Interface Prototyping
 Prototyping: building a small version of a system
 Help users identify key requirements of a
system
 Demonstrate feasibility
 Develop good user interface

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1.8 How Has SE Changed?
Software Architecture
 A system’s architecture describes the system in
terms of a set of architectural units and
relationships between these units
 Architectural decomposition techniques
 Modular decomposition
 Data-oriented decomposition
 Event-driven decomposition
 Outside-in-design decomposition
 Object-oriented decomposition

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

1.8 How Has SE Changed?

Software Process
 Many variations
 Different types of software need different
processes
 Enterprise-wide applications need a great deal
of control
 Departmental applications can take advantage
of rapid development

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1.8 How Has SE Changed?
Software Process (cont...)
 Pictorial representation of differences in
development processes

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

1.8 How Has SE Changed?

Software Reuse
 Commonalities between applications may allow
reusing artifacts from previous developments
 Improve productivity
 Reduce costs
 Potential concerns
 It may be faster to build a smaller application
than searching for reusable components
 Generalized components take more time to build
 Must clarify who will be responsible for
maintaining reusable components
 Generality vs specificity: always a conflict
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1.8 How Has SE Changed?
Measurement
 Objective: describe quality goals in a quantitative
way

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

1.8 How Has SE Changed?

Tools and Integrated Environments
 Platform integration (on heterogeneous networks)
 Presentation integration (commonality of user
interface)
 Process integration (linking tools and the
development process)
 Data integration (to share common data)
 Control integration (the ability of one tool to initiate
action in another one)

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1.9 What this Chapter Means for You

 Given a problem to solve

 Analyze it
 Synthesize a solution
 Understand that requirements may change
 Must view quality from several different
perspectives
 Use fundamental software engineering concepts
(e.g., abstractions and measurements)
 Keep system boundary in mind

Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, East Africa University

Group discussion

 Group 1: Discuss the importance of

Software Engineering?
 Group 2: System Approach and give
examples of the element of a system
 Group 3: How has SE changed? Discuss
the tools and integrated environments
changes

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