Introduction to Software Engineering

Fundamentals
 Software engineering
branch associated with
development of software
product using well-
defined scientific
principles, methods and
procedures.
 The outcome of software
engineering is an efficient
and reliable software
product.

Chapter 1 Introduction 2
What is Software Engineering?

 Software engineering is:

 An engineering discipline that provides knowledge,
tools, and methods for:
• Defining software requirements
• Performing software design
• Software construction
• Software Modelling
• Software testing
• Software maintenance tasks
• Software project management
Software Engineering Fundamentals

1. Software engineering overview

 Requirements & Analysis
 Design & Construction
 Software Modelling
 Testing
 Project management
2. Development methodologies overview
 The Waterfall development process
 Agile methodologies and XP
Software Development Activities

 Software development always includes the following

activities (to some extent):
 Requirements analysis Software
 Design Modelling &
 Construction Project
 Testing Management

 These activities do not follow strictly one after another!

 Often overlap and interact
Software Requirements

 Software requirements define the functionality of the

system
 Answer the question "what?", not "how?"
 Define constraints on the system
 Two kinds of requirements
• Functional requirements
• Non-functional requirements
Requirements Analysis

 Requirements analysis starts from a vision about the

system
 Customers don't know what they need!
 Requirements come roughly and are specified and
extended iteratively
 Prototyping is often used, especially for the user interface
 The outcome is the Software Requirements Specification
(SRS)
Software Requirements
Specification (SRS)
 The Software Requirements Specification (SRS) is a
formal requirements document
 It describes in details:
 Functional requirements
• E.g. Use Cases(Software Modelling)
 Non-functional requirements
• E.g. performance, scalability, etc.
Software Requirements

 It is always hard to describe and document the

requirements in comprehensive and not ambiguous way
 Good requirements save time and money
 Requirements always change during the project!
 Good software requirements specification reduces the
changes
 Prototypes significantly reduce changes
Software Architecture and
Software Design
 Software design is a technical description about how the
system will implement the requirements
 The system architecture describes:
 How the system will be decomposed into subsystems
(modules)
 Responsibilities of each module
 Interaction between modules
 Platforms and technologies
Software Modelling
 UML  class diagram, component diagrams
Software Design

 Component Design
 Describes the internal module structure
 Interfaces, data design, process design
 Object-Oriented Design
 Describes the classes, their responsibilities,
relationships, dependencies, and interactions
 Internal Class Design
 Methods, responsibilities, algorithms and interactions
between them
Software Design Document
(SDD)
 The Software Design Document (SDD) is a formal
description of the architecture and design of the system
 It contains:
 Architecture design
• Modules and their interaction (diagram)
 For each module
• Process design (E.g. sequence diagrams)
• Data design (E.g. E/R diagram)
• Interfaces design (E.g. class diagram)
Software Construction

 During the software construction phase developers

create the software
 Sometimes called implementation phase
 It includes:
 Internal method design
 Writing code
 Writing unit tests (white boxing tests)
 Debugging
 Integration (and Integration testing)
Writing the Code

 Coding is the process of writing the programming code

(the source code)
 The code strictly follows the design
 Developers perform internal method design as part of
coding
 The source code is the output of the software construction
process
 Written by developers
 Can include unit tests
 Testing the Code

 Testing checks whether the developed software conforms

to the requirements
 Aims to identify defects (bugs)
 Developers test the code after write it
 At least run it to see the results
 Unit testing is even better
• Units tests can be repeated many times
 System testing is done by QA engineers
 Unit testing is done by developers
Debugging

 Debugging aims to find the source of already identified

defect and to fix it
 Performed by developers
 Steps in debugging:
 Find the defect in the code
• Identify the source of the problem
• Identify the exact place in code causing it
 Fix the defect
 Test to check if the fix is correct
 Integration
 Integration is putting all pieces together
 Compile, run and deploy the modules as single system
 Test to identify defects
 Integration strategies
 Big bang, top-down and bottom-up
 Continuous integration
Coding != Software Engineering
 Inexperienced developers consider coding the core of
development
 In most projects coding is only 20% of the project
activities!
 The important decisions are taken during the
requirements analysis and design
 Documentation, testing, integration, maintenance, etc.
are often disparaged
 Software engineering is not just coding!
 Programmer != software engineer
Software Verification

 What is software verification?

 It checks whether the developed software conforms to
the requirements
 Performed by the Software Quality Assurance
Engineers (QA)
 Two approaches:
 Formal reviews and inspections
 Different kinds of testing
 Cannot certify absence of defects!
 Can only decrease their rates
!

.
Software Testing

 Testing checks whether the developed software

conforms to the requirements
 Testing aims to find defects (bugs)
 Black-box and white-box tests
 Unit tests, integration tests, system tests, acceptance
tests
 Stress tests, load tests, regression tests
 Tester engineers can use automated test tools to
record and execute tests
Software Testing Process

 Test planning
 Establish test strategy and test plan
 During requirements and design phases
 Test development
 Test procedures, test scenarios, test cases, test
scripts
 Test execution
 Test reporting
 Retesting the defects
Test Plan and Test Cases

 The test plan is a formal document that describes how

tests will be performed
 List of test activities to be performed to ensure meeting
the requirements
 Features to be tested, testing approach, schedule,
acceptance criteria
 Test scenarios and test cases
 Test scenarios – stories to be tested
 Test cases – tests of single function
What is Project Management?

 Project management is the discipline of organizing and

managing resources in order to successfully complete a
project
 Successfully means within defined scope, quality, time
and cost constraints
 Project constraints:
Scope
Project Success

Quality
What is Software Project
Management?
 Software project management
 Management discipline about planning, monitoring
and controlling software projects
 Project planning
 Identify the scope, estimate the work involved, and
create a project schedule
 Project monitoring and control
 Keep the team up to date on the project's progress
and handle problems
What is Project Plan?

 The project plan is a document that describes how the

work on the project will be organized
 Contains tasks, resources, schedule, milestones, etc.
 Tasks have start, end, assigned resources (team
members), % complete, dependencies, nested tasks,
etc.
 Project management tools simplify creating and monitoring
project plans
Project Plan – Example
What is a Development
Methodology?
 A development methodology is a set of practices and
procedures for creating software

 A set of rules that developers have to follow

 A set of conventions the organization decides to
follow
 A systematical, engineering approach for organizing
software projects
The Waterfall Process

 The waterfall development process:

Software
Requirements

Software
Design

Implementation
(Coding)

Verification
(Testing)

Operation
(Maintenance)
The Agile Manifesto

“Our highest priority is to satisfy the

customer through early and continuous
delivery of valuable software“

Manifesto for Agile

The Agile Spirit

 Incremental
 Working software over comprehensive documentation
 Cooperation
 Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
 Straightforward
 Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
 Adaptive
 Responding to change over following a plan
 Agile Method: Extreme programming

 Perhaps the best-known and most widely used agile method.

 Extreme Programming (XP) takes an ‘extreme’ approach to iterative
development.
 New versions may be built several times per day;
 Increments are delivered to customers every 2 weeks;
 All tests must be run for every build and the build is only accepted if
tests run successfully.

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Extreme programming

Principle or practice Description

Incremental planning Requirements are recorded on story cards and the stories to be
included in a release are determined by the time available and
their relative priority. The developers break these stories into
development ‘Tasks’. See Figures 3.5 and 3.6.

Small releases The minimal useful set of functionality that provides business
value is developed first. Releases of the system are frequent
and incrementally add functionality to the first release.

Simple design Enough design is carried out to meet the current requirements
and no more.
Test-first development An automated unit test framework is used to write tests for a
new piece of functionality before that functionality itself is
implemented.
Refactoring All developers are expected to refactor the code continuously as
soon as possible code improvements are found. This keeps the
code simple and maintainable.
Chapter 3 Agile software
32
development
Agile Method: Scrum

 The Scrum approach is a general agile method but its focus is on managing iterative
development rather than specific agile practices.

 There are three phases in Scrum.

 The initial phase is an outline planning phase where you establish the general
objectives for the project and design the software architecture.
 This is followed by a series of sprint cycles, where each cycle develops an increment
of the system.
 The project closure phase wraps up the project, completes required documentation
such as system help frames and user manuals and assesses the lessons learned from
the project.

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