Managing Software Quality and Process COMP4130
Course overview
Assumed knowledge & required skills
Should have basic understanding of software development life cycles, even it is as basic as the following four phases: establishing & analysisng requirements, designing, coding, and testing. Also appreciate that software developments should be managed so as to deliver products that are fit for use, on time, and to budget. Some (even vague) idea of the concepts of quality and maturity will enable more rapid uptake of the essential principles that will be conveyed in this course.
Course description
COMP4130 is a 4th year course for students undertaking the Bachelor of Software Engineering. It is a twp part course covering Quaility Management and Software Process & Practical Measurement, respectively.
Ther first half of the course is intended to provide both experienced and relatively new software developers/engineers with practical information concerning verification and validation of various artefacts that are typically produced during the development of small to large software systems. All the techniques of verification and validation to be discussed/presented, have been found to significantly enhance the quality of both software products and the corresponding development processes. The second half of the course is intended to provide software developers with practical information and techniques surrounding software process and measurement practices that have been found to enhance the capability and maturity of software development organisations.
Course content
The content will focus on gaining practical knowledge and useful techniques for enabling the production of quality deliverables on software projects. Doing so will mean that students need to taught the broad meaning of quality and how to verify and validate that quality is being maintained throughout a project.
Ensuring quality means a combination of measurement and process. Hence students will be taught some practical measures as well as some practical aspects of process, and process improvement.
Today, there are standards that have been developed that support all three major aspects of this course. These standards will be referred to throughout the course.
Rationale
If you don't define and verify what you intend to create, you're very unlikely to be able to validate that you've created what you intended to create.
Ideas
Better process, better measures, better quality!
Topics
The following topics will be covered:
- Quality and what it means
- Verification and validation
- Inspections
- Test Planning
- Test Cases & Testing
- Capability Maturity Model Integrated
- Process Assessment
- Practical Systems and Software Measurement.
Technical skills
Techniques to identify and use practical measures.
Practical techniques for measuring and monitoring quality.
Practical techniques to assess process maturity/capability.
Workload
One team assignment,
One individual assignment.
One final examination.
