Chapter 1- Introduction

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Topics covered

 Professional software development

 What is meant by software engineering.

 Software engineering ethics

 ethical issues that affect software engineering.

 Case studies

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Software engineering

 What
 Theories, methods and tools for software
development

 Why
 Automation
 Cost-effective (cheaper on the long run)

 How
 Following SDLC

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Cost

 What do you think about software cost

 Compared to hardware
 Development
 Maintenance

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Failure

 Why software projects fail?

 Complexity
 Poor communication
 Lack of QC, QA
 Tight architecture
 Haphazard development (no SDLC)

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 Professional software development

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FAQs

Question Answer

What is software? Computer programs and associated documentation.

• Deliver required functionalities

What are the attributes of good software? • Maintainable
• Performance
• Usable
What is software engineering? Software engineering is an engineering discipline that is
concerned with all aspects of software production.
• Specification
What are the fundamental software
• Development
engineering activities?
• Validation
What is the difference between software • Evolution
engineering and computer science? Computer science focuses on theory and fundamentals;
software engineering is concerned with the practicalities
of developing and delivering useful software.
What is the difference between software
System engineering is concerned with all aspects of
engineering and system engineering?
computer-based systems development including
hardware, software and process engineering. Software
engineering is part of this more general process.
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FAQs

Question Answer
increasing diversity, reduced delivery times, trustworthy.
What are the key challenges facing
software engineering? 60% development,
40% testing.
What are the costs of software
Evolution: exceed development costs.
engineering?

What are the best software engineering No one size fits all
techniques and methods?
• Games: Spiral, series of prototypes
• Safety critical systems: Water fall.
• Web portal: Agile

What differences has the web made to • Distributed services

software engineering? • Web based portals
• Cloud platform

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Essential attributes of good software

Attribute Description

Maintainability Evolvable

Dependability and • Circuit breaker

security • Access control
• Error containment

Efficiency • CPU utilization

• Memory utilization

1. Responsive
2. Resilient
3. Elastic

Acceptability Acceptable and understandable by users

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Definition

Software engineering is an engineering discipline

that is concerned with all aspects of software
production from the early stages of system
specification through to maintaining the system after
it has gone into use.

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Definition

 Engineering discipline
 GIVEN theories & methods
 SOLVE technical & project problems
 CONSTRAINT organization & financial constraints
 All aspects of software production
 technical process of development.
project management
 development of tools, methods etc. to support software
production.
 COTS

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Activities

 Specification
• customers and engineers define the software requirements
• with conditions and constraints on operation
 Development
• design and programming.
 Validation,
• QC.
• QA
 Evolution
• Modification
• New customer requests (CR)
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 No universal software engineering methods or techniques
that may be used for all kinds of software. However, there are
factors that affect different types of software

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Issues that affect software

 Heterogeneity
 Channel: Web, Desktop, Mobile
 Backend: Java, PHP, NodeJS
 Frontend: React, Angular, VueJS
 Business and social change
 Social Logins
 Contactless payment
 eWallet
 Loyalty programs

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Issues that affect software

 Security and trust

 Security.
 Trust

 Scale
 Embedded systems
 Wearable devices
 Web-based
 Smart phones
 Cloud-based

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Software engineering fundamentals

 Adopt development process

 Dependability and performance

 Solid software specs and requirements

 Reuse existing software as possible

 Incremental delivery where possible

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 Software engineering ethics

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Software engineering ethics

 Confidentiality
 respect the confidentiality of your employers or clients
 Competence
 Maintain your level of competence
 Don’t accept a work outside your competences
 Computer misuse
 Back-door development
 Game playing on employer machine
 Intellectual property right
 Knowledge of governmental laws
 Copyrights

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The ACM/IEEE Code of Ethics

Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice

ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Task Force on Software Engineering Ethics and Professional

Practices

PREAMBLE
Software engineers shall commit themselves to making the analysis, specification,
design, development, testing and maintenance of software a beneficial and
respected profession. In accordance with their commitment to the health, safety
and welfare of the public, software engineers shall adhere to the following Eight
Principles:

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The ACM/IEEE Code of Ethics

1. PUBLIC

2. CLIENT AND EMPLOYER

3. PRODUCT

4. JUDGMENT

5. MANAGEMENT

6.PROFESSION

7.COLLEAGUES

8. SELF
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Ethical principles

1. PUBLIC –
1. Accept full responsibility for their own work
2. Approve software only if they have a well-founded belief that it is safe, meets
specifications, passes appropriate tests, and does not diminish quality .
3. Be fair and avoid deception in all statements
2. CLIENT AND EMPLOYER –
1. Not knowingly use software that is obtained or retained illegally/unethically
2. Ensure that any document upon which they rely has been approved
3. Keep private any confidential information gained in their professional work
3. PRODUCT –
1. Strive for high quality, acceptable cost and a reasonable schedule, ensuring
significant tradeoffs are clear to and accepted by the employer and the client
2. Ensure that they are qualified for any project on which they work
3. Strive to fully understand the specifications for software on which they work
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Ethical principles

4. JUDGMENT–
1. Maintain professional objectivity with respect to any software or related
documents they are asked to evaluate
2. Refuse to participate, in a private, governmental or professional body, in which
they, their employers or their clients have potential conflicts of interest
5. MANAGEMENT –
1. Attract potential software engineers only by full and accurate description of
the conditions of employment
2. Ensure good management for any project on which they work
3. Ensure realistic quantitative estimates of cost, scheduling, personnel, quality
and outcomes
6. PROFESSION –
1. Help develop an organizational environment favorable
2. Promote and influence public knowledge of software engineering

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 Case studies

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Case studies

 A personal insulin pump

 An embedded system in an insulin pump used by diabetics to
maintain blood glucose control.
 A mental health case patient management system
 Mentcare.A system used to maintain records of people receiving
care for mental health problems.
 A wilderness weather station
 A data collection system that collects data about weather
conditions in remote areas.
 iLearn: a digital learning environment
 A system to support learning in schools

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Insulin pump control system

 Collects data from a blood sugar sensor and calculates

the amount of insulin required to be injected.
 Calculation based on the rate of change of blood sugar
levels.
 Sends signals to a micro-pump to deliver the correct
dose of insulin.
 Safety-critical system as low blood sugars can lead to
brain malfunctioning, coma and death; high-blood sugar
levels have long-term consequences such as eye and
kidney damage.

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Insulin pump hardware architecture

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Activity model of the insulin pump

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Essential high-level requirements

 The system shall be available to deliver insulin when

required.
 The system shall perform reliably and deliver the correct
amount of insulin to counteract the current level of blood
sugar.
 The system must therefore be designed and
implemented to ensure that the system always meets
these requirements.

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Mentcare: A patient information system for
mental health care

 A patient information system to support mental health

care is a medical information system that maintains
information about patients suffering from mental health
problems and the treatments that they have received.
 Most mental health patients do not require dedicated
hospital treatment but need to attend specialist clinics
regularly where they can meet a doctor who has detailed
knowledge of their problems.
 To make it easier for patients to attend, these clinics are
not just run in hospitals. They may also be held in local
medical practices or community centres.

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Mentcare

 Mentcare is an information system that is intended for

use in clinics.
 It makes use of a centralized database of patient
information but has also been designed to run on a PC,
so that it may be accessed and used from sites that do
not have secure network connectivity.
 When the local systems have secure network access,
they use patient information in the database but they can
download and use local copies of patient records when
they are disconnected.

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Mentcare goals

 To generate management information that allows health

service managers to assess performance against local
and government targets.
 To provide medical staff with timely information to
support the treatment of patients.

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The organization of the Mentcare system

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Key features of the Mentcare system

 Individual care management

 Clinicians can create records for patients, edit the information in
the system, view patient history, etc. The system supports data
summaries so that doctors can quickly learn about the key
problems and treatments that have been prescribed.
 Patient monitoring
 The system monitors the records of patients that are involved in
treatment and issues warnings if possible problems are detected.
 Administrative reporting
 The system generates monthly management reports showing the
number of patients treated at each clinic, the number of patients
who have entered and left the care system, number of patients
sectioned, the drugs prescribed and their costs, etc.
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Mentcare system concerns

 Privacy
 It is essential that patient information is confidential and is never
disclosed to anyone apart from authorised medical staff and the
patient themselves.
 Safety
 Some mental illnesses cause patients to become suicidal or a
danger to other people. Wherever possible, the system should
warn medical staff about potentially suicidal or dangerous
patients.
 The system must be available when needed otherwise safety
may be compromised and it may be impossible to prescribe the
correct medication to patients.

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Wilderness weather station

 The government of a country with large areas of

wilderness decides to deploy several hundred weather
stations in remote areas.
 Weather stations collect data from a set of instruments
that measure temperature and pressure, sunshine,
rainfall, wind speed and wind direction.
 The weather station includes a number of instruments that
measure weather parameters such as the wind speed and
direction, the ground and air temperatures, the barometric
pressure and the rainfall over a 24-hour period. Each of these
instruments is controlled by a software system that takes
parameter readings periodically and manages the data collected
from the instruments.
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The weather station’s environment

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 Weather information system

 The weather station system

 This is responsible for collecting weather data, carrying out some
initial data processing and transmitting it to the data management
system.
 The data management and archiving system
 This system collects the data from all of the wilderness weather
stations, carries out data processing and analysis and archives the
data.
 The station maintenance system
 This system can communicate by satellite with all wilderness
weather stations to monitor the health of these systems and provide
reports of problems.

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Additional software functionality

 Monitor the instruments, power and communication

hardware and report faults to the management system.
 Manage the system power, ensuring that batteries are
charged whenever the environmental conditions permit
but also that generators are shut down in potentially
damaging weather conditions, such as high wind.
 Support dynamic reconfiguration where parts of the
software are replaced with new versions and where
backup instruments are switched into the system in the
event of system failure.

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iLearn: A digital learning environment

 A digital learning environment is a framework in which a

set of general-purpose and specially designed tools for
learning may be embedded plus a set of applications
that are geared to the needs of the learners using the
system.
 The tools included in each version of the environment
are chosen by teachers and learners to suit their specific
needs.
 These can be general applications such as spreadsheets,
learning management applications such as a Virtual Learning
Environment (VLE) to manage homework submission and
assessment, games and simulations.

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Service-oriented systems

 The system is a service-oriented system with all system

components considered to be a replaceable service.
 This allows the system to be updated incrementally as
new services become available.
 It also makes it possible to rapidly configure the system
to create versions of the environment for different groups
such as very young children who cannot read, senior
students, etc.

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iLearn services

 Utility services that provide basic application-

independent functionality and which may be used by
other services in the system.
 Application services that provide specific applications
such as email, conferencing, photo sharing etc. and
access to specific educational content such as scientific
films or historical resources.
 Configuration services that are used to adapt the
environment with a specific set of application services
and do define how services are shared between
students, teachers and their parents.

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iLearn architecture

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iLearn service integration

 Integrated services are services which offer an API

(application programming interface) and which can be
accessed by other services through that API. Direct
service-to-service communication is therefore possible.
 Independent services are services which are simply
accessed through a browser interface and which operate
independently of other services. Information can only be
shared with other services through explicit user actions
such as copy and paste; re-authentication may be
required for each independent service.

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Key points

 Group of 5

 Discuss what have you learnt in this chapter

• Concepts
• New facts

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Questions

1. Based on your understanding, what are the

reasons for software failure?
2. Software engineering is an engineering discipline
that is concerned with all aspects of software
production, discuss!
3. What are the fundamental activities of software
engineering?
4. no ONE method fits all, discuss the concept in
the context of software engineering

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Questions

5. Based on your understanding, what are the main

factors that affect the software cost?
6. What is the major difference between generic &
custom software product types?
7. Why is maintainability an essential attribute for
good software products?
8. Discuss and mention the pillars of reactive
software
9. Based on your understanding, discuss the
activities of software process (no more than one
statement per activity)
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Questions

10. Based on your understanding, mention some

issues that might affect software
11. Consider you have been promoted to a team
leader in your company, what are the fundamental
factors that you would adopt for better software
development?
12. Confidentiality and computer misuse are two
factors in software engineering ethics, discuss!
13. Briefly discuss why it is usually cheaper in the long
run to use software engineering methods and
techniques for software systems
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References

1. https://iansommerville.com/software-engineering-
book/static/about/
2. https://codingsans.com/state-of-software-
development-2019
3. https://hired.com/page/state-of-software-
engineers/#about-hired

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