SE433/CSC366 - Assignments

I do not accept email submissions. Assignments should be typed and hardcopy submitted at the start of class on the date due. Any additional requirements will be indicated in the description of the assignment.

Chapter and page numbers specified in descriptions below refer to the course text, Rapid Testing, by R. Culbertson, C. Brown & G Cobb, unless otherwise indicated.

• Assignment #1: (Due: 10/14)
  Note: In addition to readings from your text, you will find other readings that may help in preparing your paper. I have provided links to some of these extra readings. Note that some are from refereed journals and others from popular magazines.
  1. Validation & Verification:
     1. Chapter 1, pages 5 - 7. The Lewis, Pfleeger, and Schulmeyer et al references on page 21 may also help.
     2. Optional: You may find this article: "V&V LifeCycle Methodologies" (pdf viewer required) by David Rico interesting.
        Note: Provided by StickyMinds.
  2. Inspections:
     1. Chapter 9, pages 188 - 192. The Fagan paper "Design and Code Inspections to reduce errors in Program Development" (pdf viewer required) that initially proposed Inspections (see the references on page 205) will help.
        
     2. Optional: You may find these Software Inspections papers (postscript viewer required) by Harvey Siy et al interesting.
     3. Optional: You may find this article: "Seven Deadly Sins of Software Reviews" (pdf viewer required) by Karl Wiegers interesting.
        Note: Provided by StickyMinds.
     4. Optional: Other articles by Karl Wiegers that you may find interesting: "Improving Quality Through Software Inspections", "Humanizing Peer Reviews", and "Seven Truths About Peer Reviews".

• Assignment #2: (Due: 11/4)
  Note: Read pages 210 - 211 for a very general overview of Equivalence Partitioning and Boundary Value Analysis. Note that this reading will not be sufficient to complete the assignment. Please see the notes for lecture #5 for a detailed discussion of these techniques.

• Research Paper Topics
  Presentations will be held during class on Monday, 11/11 and Monday 11/18. The paper is due on the day of the final exam. That is Monday, 11/25. Team presentations and paper submissions are allowed. However teams are limited to two individuals and these teams must be decided on by end of class on Monday, 11/4. The presentation schedule will also be defined by end of day Monday 11/4. This means that all students must know when they plan to present on Monday, 11/4 and must indicate to me whether they will be a part of a team and who the team members are on Monday, 11/4. Following are instructions for the presentation and paper.
  1. Presentation:
     You should prepare transparencies for your presentation. You may use any software tool to prepare your presentation but remember to focus on content not glitz! I suggest 20 - 24 point Times Roman or Arial or Courier or Helvetica font for your text. Each transparency should have 3 - 5 main points that you intend to highlight. Plan on doing a 20 minute presentation with a 10 minute question and answer session (mostly from me). A good rule of thumb is to prepare 8 - 10 transparencies for a 20 minute presentation (i.e. 2 - 2.5 minutes per transparency). Your presentation will be graded thus:
     1. Content: 45%
     2. Presentation: 30%
     3. Question & Answer: 15%
     4. Time management: 10%
     Since your grade is affected by how you manage your presentation time, I suggest a dry run prior to your presentation. Remember that you will need to turn in a paper hardcopy of your transparencies with the names of the authors/presenters clearly indicated on the cover page.
     Note: For team presentations, remember that each member of the team must do a part of the presentation. In such cases you may each receive a different score for points ii - iv.
  2. Paper:
     You have several options. You may write a survey paper that identifies and discusses the major developments in your topic. Alternatively, you may write a summary of two or more key papers in the field that address the issue you are interested in. If you choose to do an implementation project then your paper may focus on the details of your implementation with a brief introduction of the topic of implementation. Use these author instructions for layout and format. The instructions must be followed, they are not optional. Remember, your paper should be no more than 10 pages in length. Your paper will be graded thus:
     1. Content: 80%
     2. Format and layout: 20%
        i.e. As indicated in the author instructions.
     Note: For team papers, remember that team papers must include an attachment indicating the section(s) of the paper that each team member was responsible for. This means you may each receive a different score for the paper.