Software Process and Quality Course Introduction EEE493 2000

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Software Process and Quality Course Introduction
EEE493 2000
Royal Military College of Canada Electrical and
Computer Engineering

• Major Greg Phillips
• greg.phillips_at_rmc.ca
• 1-613-541-6000 ext. 6190

Dr. Scott Knight knight-s_at_rmc.ca 1-613-541-6000
ext. 6190
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Todays Agenda

• Introductions
• Why study process and quality?
• Course overview
• Administration

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Industrial Software Development

• Typical school assignment
• small enough to be completed by 1-2 people in 1-2
  weeks (part time)
• quality requirements? what quality requirements?
• Industrial software development
• products inherently large and complex
• development typically requires 3 months to 2
  years
• teams typically range from 5 to 1000 people
• quality problems mean
• inability of project to deliver
• loss of customer confidence
• loss of market share or future contracts
• business failure
• loss of money, property, or life

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Ariane 5
http//www.esrin.esa.it/htdocs/tidc/Press/Press96/
ariane5rep.html
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London Ambulance System
http//www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/A.Finkelstein/las.ht
ml
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Therac-25

IEEE Computer, July 1993, pp. 18-41 also
at http//ei.cs.vt.edu/cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Thera
c_1.html
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Denver International Airport
Scientific American, September 1994, pp. 8695
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US Average Project Schedule
Software Productivity Research http//www.spr.com
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US Average Cancellation Rate
Software Productivity Research http//www.spr.com
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Course Premise

• The basic premise of the course is that a better
  understanding of the software process, both at
  the personal and at the organizational level,
  will lead to better management of software
  projects and to higher-quality software.

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Objectives

• By the end of the course you should
• understand various software lifecycle models and
  standards
• use metrics in the software planning process
• understand key issues and practices for building
  quality software and
• be able to effectively measure and interpret
  measurements of both the development process and
  the developed products.

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Structure

• Module 1 Software Process
• Life-cycle models
• Planning
• Estimating size and effort
• Module 2 Software Quality
• configuration management and change control
• quality assurance and quality planning
• build cycles
• relevant standards
• inspections and testing
• Module 3 Measurement
• process metrics
• product metrics

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Materials

• Course web site at
• http//phillips.rmc.ca/eee493/
• Textbooks
• Roger S. Pressman. Software Engineering A
  Practitioner's Approach. 5th edition. McGraw-Hill
  Higher Education, 2000. ISBN 0-07-365578-3.
• Frederick P. Brooks. The Mythical Man-Month
  Essays on Software Engineering. 20th Anniversary
  Edition. Addison Wesley, 1995. ISBN 0-201-83595-9.

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Evaluation

• Development project (30)
• Reading assigments (10)
• Module 1 exam (15)
• Module 2 exam (15)
• Course final (30)
• The final will cover modules 1, 2, and 3 with a
  weighting such that marks are allocated to
  modules proportionately to the number of classes
  spent on each.

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Next ClassIntroduction to Life-cycle Models