CPEN 321: Software Engineering (Fall 2018)

Overview

The course explores engineering principles for building non-trivial software-intensive systems: requirement specification, design, implementation, verification, and maintenance. The course uses a group project as the basic learning vehicle, providing students with an environment for applying the learned principles in practice while coping with constraints encountered when working on a real team: uncertain requirements, tight deadlines, etc. Students are evaluated based on their understanding of the software engineering principles and their ability to apply these principles in practice.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the course, students will learn several fundamental skills in modern software development:

• software engineering principles: requirements specification, design, implementation, verification, and maintenance of software;
• client-server application development paradigms, including mobile and cloud-based development;
• teamwork, inter- and intra-team communication;
• management of uncertainty in customer demands;
• ability to adapt quickly to new toolsets;
• efficient technical communication and presentation.

Staff

Instructor	Julia Rubin Lectures: Mon. 3-4:30pm, MCLD 228                 Wed. 5-6:30pm, MCLD 228 Office hours: Mon. 4:30-5:30pm, KAIS 4053 (or by appointment)
TAs	Harsha Kadiyala, Duling Lai, Sahar Badihi, Michael Cao, Zeyad Tamimi Labs: Mon. 10am-12pm, MCLD 348 (Michael and Sahar) Tue. 3-5pm, MCLD 348 (Harsha) Wed. 10am-12pm, MCLD 348 (Zeyad and Sahar) Office Hours: Mon. 12-1pm, KAIS 4095 (Michael, Sahar) Wed. 2-3pm, KAIS 4095 (Harsha, Zeyad)

Communication

• Most course communication should be done via Piazza. Please enroll yourself!
  Like most online services, Piazza is hosted outside Canada. Please come and talk to the instructor if you are uncomfortable using Piazza.
• Grades for the assignments will be posted throughout the term on Canvas. Students are encouraged to check it frequently and let the staff know of any mistakes and inconsistencies.

Course Prerequisites

One of EECE 210, CPEN 221, CPSC 210, EECE 309.

Course Format

The class meets two times a week for lectures and once a week for a lab section. Lectures will include in-class quizzes. Please bring your I-Clicker to every lecture.

Lab sections are reserved for group meetings. Each group should meet with a TA for 40 minutes a week, preferably during the lab time. In exceptional cases, an alternative time can be arranged in coordination with your TA.

Classroom material will be enhanced with assigned reading. The grading will be based on the group project, in-class quizzes and 2 mid-term exams. There is no final exam.

Project

A major part of the course is the group project. The project simulates real development settings, where development teams communicate with customers to implement software that satisfies the customers’ requirements. The intent of this project is to give you the opportunity to apply the course concepts to a real system.

Scope: You are required to develop a client-server software system; the client side of the system must be a native mobile application that runs on a mobile device (i.e., not in a web browser). The server component must run in a cloud. A limited number of Microsoft Azure credits are available upon request, as described below. An example of a reasonably-scoped project is here.

Projects are performed by groups of 3-4 students, which are further paired to form communities. A community consists of two groups, A and B, with 3-4 students in each group. Groups A and B act as customer and development teams to each other. That is, group A acts as a customer of group B, while group B acts as the customer for group A. The project grade is composed from a number of assignments, performed in both customer and developer roles.

Technology: You have full freedom to choose both client and server technology (i.e., you can use Android, iOS, or a cross-platform mobile framework such as React Native or Xamarin). Your mobile app must run on some mobile device, but it does not have to run on arbitrary mobile devices.

You can host the backend components on a cloud infrastructure of your choice. Most vendors, such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and IBM, provide free subscriptions. The course stuff can also make a paid subscription to Microsoft Azure available. If interested, send a request to the instructor and list you Microsoft Azure account names.

All development artifacts must be stored in Git – a popular version control system. You will need a GitHub or Bitbucket account, but feel free to create a throw-away or anonymous account for this course, if that makes you more comfortable. Being familiar with Git is essential; please take a look at the 'getting started' part of the Atlassian Git Introduction if you are not familiar with Git. A shorter, less formal, guide is also available.

Logistics: All students in the same community must meet during the same lab section; if you want to work with someone who is in another section, one of you will have to transfer lab sections. In exceptional cases, meetings outside the lab hours can be arranged in coordination with the TAs. However, all meetings must be held during the same week.

Groups must be formed by the end of the second week, namely, by September 14. Please choose your team members carefully, as no changes will be permitted. If you do not have a team organized after the first lecture, please go to Piazza and find your partners there; otherwise, we will assign you randomly to a team. Everyone should have partners by the end of the second week of the course. Use this link to submit your project description and team members.

Communities must be formed by the end of the third week, namely, by September 21; no changes will be permitted. Use this link to submit your choices. If you cannot find a peer group, we will randomly assign you one.

Communities are required to have regular weekly meetings to synchronize and to report on the work progress. Meetings will take around 40 minutes (20 minutes for each “customer” in the community), and will be facilitated and evaluated by the TAs. A staff member will contact your community to set up a meeting during your lab section.

Structure of weekly reports: Each meeting must be summarized in a 1-page report and submitted to the course staff. Weekly status reports help to keep the staff and yourselves informed about your progress. The team status must include (a) a high-level description of the progress for the week, (b) the plans for next week, (c) major decisions and changes in the scope of the project, and (d) the contributions of individual team members. The weekly deliverable, when required, should not be part of a 1-page report, but should be attached to it. One weekly report per team should be submitted in a pdf format via Canvas. Please use this link to submit your reports.

Late deliverables will be subject to the following penalties:

• 1st deliverable late: 20% off.
• 2nd deliverable late: 40% off.
• 3rd deliverable late: 80% off.
• 4th and on deliverable late: no points given.

Project milestones

• W2 (September 14): groups are formed. Each group proposes an idea that they would like to implement. Group members and project proposals are submitted here.
• W3 (September 17, 19): proposed ideas are pitched in class (your first chance to practice your technical communication skills), and voted by other teams.
• W3 (September 21): communities are formed. Communities, project Git repositories, and preferred meeting times are submitted here.
• W4: Development team and the customer discuss the requirements.

• Weekly project meetings. Reports are submitted here.
• W5: M1 – Requirements (both customer and development teams).
• W6: M2 – Design (development team).
• W8: M3 – MVP (development team).
• W9: M4 – Code review (both customer and development teams).
• W10: M5 – Test plan (development team).
• W11: M6 – Refined specifications (development team).
• W12: M7 – Test results, including customer acceptance test (both customer and development teams).

• W13: M8 – Final project presentations (in class on Monday and during lab hours)
• W13: Top projects presented in class on Wednesday.

The exact requirements and expectations for each milestone will be provided in lectures. The structure of the report is described above.

Grading

Grading for this course is based on three components:

• Project – 55%
  • Proposal: 5% (assessed based on clarity and depths of the idea)
  • M1 – M7: 5% each (35% in total)
  • M8: 15% (5% for the presentation quality, 5% for the project quality, and 5% for the quality of the SE process followed)
• Quizzes – 40%
  • In-class I-Clicker quizzes: 15%
  • Mid-term 1: 10%
  • Mid-term 2: 15%
    
• Participation – 5%
  • Acting as a responsible customer by providing constructive feedback to the “development” team
  • Noticing and addressing concerns of your “customer” team and TAs
  • Project contribution
  • Asking and answering questions in class
  • Providing good answers to questions posed by your classmates on Piazza

Absence

• Weekly meeting with TAs starting W4 are mandatory. You can miss up to 2 weekly meetings. For these meetings, if your work is listed in the weekly report, you will be graded with your group. No points will be credited starting from the 3rd absence.
• You can miss up to 1 in-class quiz. Your top quizzes, ignoring the one with the lowest mark, will be considered for the final grade. If you miss more than 1 in-class quiz or you miss a mid-term, make-up will be scheduled with a request from the Engineering Student Services.

Topics and Schedule

Note that this is a tentative week-by-week guide and thus is subject to change.

	Date	Topic	Project Milestones	Reading Material / Other Comments
W1	Wed, Sept 5, 2018	Intro, what is SE
W2	Mon, Sept 10, 2018	Software Lifecycle, Development Processes		Tutorials on Mobile Reading: Git Introduction and Guide
	Wed, Sept 12, 2018	UML	Groups formed; project descriptions due
W3	Mon, Sept 17, 2018	Project pitches		Tutorials on Backend Reading: Component diagrams and Activity diagrams
	Wed, Sept 19, 2018	Project pitches	Communities formed
W4	Mon, Sept 24, 2018	Requirements	Requirements discussed	Reading on Design Patterns: Factory Method, Abstract Factory, Decorator, Proxy, and Visitor.
	Wed, Sept 26, 2018	More on Requiremets
W5	Mon, Oct 1, 2018	Arcitecture and Design	M1: Requirements	Reading: Microservices by James Lewis and Martin Fowler
	Wed, Oct 3, 2018	REST, Microservices
W6	Mon, Oct 8, 2018	Thanksgiving Day	M2: Design
	Wed, Oct 10, 2018	Mid-term 1
W7	Mon, Oct 15, 2018	Verification and Validation, Analysis		Last day to withdraw
	Wed, Oct 17, 2018	Code Reviews, Anti-patterns
W8	Mon, Oct 22, 2018	Testing	M3: MVP	Reading: Coding Horror "Code Smells", A Taxonomy for Bad Code Smells
	Wed, Oct 24, 2018	More on Testing and Analysis
W9	Mon, Oct 29, 2018	Guest Lecture	M4: Code Review	Reading: Articles on Continous Integration by the Agile Alliance and Martin Fowler
	Wed, Oct 31, 2018	Guest Lecture
W10	Mon, Nov 5, 2018	Continuous Integration, DevOps	M5: Test plan
	Wed, Nov 7, 2018	Teamwork, Advanced Version Control
W11	Mon, Nov 12, 2018	Remembrance Day	M6: Refined specifications
	Wed, Nov 14, 2018	Recap, mid-term preparation
W12	Mon, Nov 19, 2018	Mid-term 2	M7: Test results, including customer acceptance test
	Wed, Nov 21, 2018	Q/A, preparation for final project presentation
W13	Mon, Nov 26, 2018	Final project presentations in the lecture and lab time	M8: Final product + presentation
	Wed, Nov 28, 2018	Top project presentations and awards

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the inspiration we drew and part of the material that we adapted from the previous editions of CPEN 321 and CPSC 310 (University of British Columbia), as well as from CSE 403 (University of Washington), CSC C01 (University of Toronto), and CS 169 (UC Berkley).