| Course Code | COMP1531 |
| Course Title | Software Engineering Fundamentals |
| Convenor | Aarthi Natarajan |
| Admin | Mei Cheng Whale |
| Classes |
Lectures
:
Wed 09:00 - 11:00 Mathews Theatre A (K-D23-201) 1-5,6-12 Thu 09:00 - 11:00 Mathews Theatre A (K-D23-201) 1-5,6-12 Timetable for all classes |
| Consultations | Tuesday, 1:00 - 2:00, Room 203, K17 |
| Units of Credit | 6 |
| Course Website | http://cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1531/18s1/ |
| Handbook Entry | http://www.handbook.unsw.edu.au/undergraduate/courses/current/COMP1531.html |
This course provides an introduction to software engineering principles: software life-cycle concepts, modern development methodologies including XP, Scrum etc., conceptual modeling and how these activities relate to programming. The students are exposed to agile software practices, team collaboration and effective communication through implementing a group project based on agile software methodologies that requires them to analyse, design, build and deploy a web-based application. This course is typically taken in the semester after completing COMP 1511, but could be delayed and taken later. It provides essential background for the teamwork and project management required in many later courses.
The goal of this course is to expose the students to:
We assume that students have taken a first programming course, which has included:
These are assumed to have been acquired in COMP 1511.
After completing this course, students will be able to:
This course uses the standard set of practice-focused teaching strategies employed by most CSE foundational courses:
This course aims to provide the students with a strong foundation in the fundamental principles and practices of software engineering that will prepare them for the advanced software engineering workshops. As such, a broad range of key software engineering topics will be taught and reinforced through an individual assignment and a group project, that will enable students to apply the theoretical concepts acquired to solve a practical software engineering problem. An agile software delivery style has been chosen for the implementation of the group project, to make students familiar with modern agile development methodologies.
Lectures will be used to present the theory and practice of the techniques in this course. Although the lectures will primarily focus on the key concepts of software engineering, some lectures will also include practical demonstrations of various key technologies required for the implementation of the group project. Lecture notes will be available on the course web page.
Each tutorial_lab_session will comprise a 1 hour tutorial followed by a 2 hour practical lab session. These sessions commence from week 2 .
Tutorials will serve two purposes: (1) clarify ideas from lectures and work through exercises based on the lecture material (2) provide practical demonstrations in the tools and languages that students would need to learn to implement their group project. You should make sure that you use them effectively by examining in advance the material to be covered in each week's tutorial, by asking questions, by offering suggestions and by generally participating. The tutorial questions will be posted on the Web in the week before each tutorial. Attendance at the tutorial is compulsory and tutorial participation will constitute 2 % of the overall course mark.
Following the tutorial class each week, there will be a two-hour laboratory class . The nature of the activities carried out in the lab sessions will vary each week. Lab sessions will comprise design and a variety of small practical exercises involving the tools and frameworks introduced during the lectures. These exercises will be released in the week preceding the lab class. Completed solutions (source-code, design artifacts etc) to each week's lab exercise MUST be uploaded to GitHub. Your tutor will not award any marks for the lab exercise if the completed solution is not uploaded to GitHub. In addition, some lab exercises may require submission through the GIVE submission system. Details of due-date for the lab exercise and submission details will be outlined in each week's lab specification.
Most weeks, the lab exercises will involve tasks that are to be completed individually. Some lab sessions may be done in pairs, where you and partner will be "pair programming". Pair programming is an activity in agile software development activity, where one person is coding and the other person reviews if the software delivers the required goals. A pair-programming session will typically involve multiple exercises to enable you and your partner to swap the roles of the "coder" and "reviewer". You and you partner should discuss the exercises before going to the lab, to maximise the usefulness of the class and decide on the role you will be taking.
Summary:
to obtain any lab marks for the Week X lab, you must do 2 things:
You cannot obtain marks by e-mailing lab work to tutors. Your tutor will provide feedback during a lab session on your approach to the problem and on the style of your solution. All labs must normally be demonstrated OR submitted by the due-date. Your tutor may grant you an extension on the lab exercise if you have been unable to complete the lab exercise due to illness or unavoidable circumstances (e.g, jury duty)
Periodically, the lab sessions will also be used to schedule demonstrations of your ongoing group project. As the implementation of the group project will be based on an agile software development methodology , you will required to demonstrate (as a team) progress of your project in iterations. No excuses will be accepted (unless unavoidable circumstances) for some members of the team not being present for the iteration demo.
As this course is has a significant practical component, laboratory classes are important to help you acquire the necessary skills in the relevant tools and frameworks that will be used in the implementation of the group project and also prepare you for the final exam. If you do not put a good amount of effort into the lab classes you risk failing the group project and the final exam.
The practical lab sessions will contribute to
10%
of your overall course mark. The mark for iteration demonstration of the group project will go towards the mark allocated for your group project.
Use of GitHub will be strongly enforced in this course, as using GitHub as the medium of team collaboration and source control is a key learning outcome that will be applied by students in several following courses through their degree.
There will be one assignment (a design-based) to be completed individually which will be released in week 3 and will be due in week 5, Friday before the mid-semester break. This assignment will constitute 5% of the overall course mark.
There will one main group project which will run through the rest of the teaching period and contributes to 30% of the overall course mark. The specification of the group project will be released in week 5. You are required to form groups of 3 (no more than 3) for the group project.
The group project will be implemented using an agile software delivery mode. As such, your team will be required to build and deliver the project in iterations. Each iteration will deliver a part of the requirements of the project and will encompass all the SDLC activities, namely analysis, design, coding and testing. At the end of the iteration, you (as a team) will demonstrate to your lab class the functionality implemented during that iteration cycle. Changes to project requirements are a natural and unavoidable part of any software project life-cycle. Hence, students will need to bear in mind that project requirements may be subject to change and enhancements to functionalities may be made at the end of each iteration. You will need to carefully design the solution for your current iteration, such that the solution is extensible to accommodate these changes. The lectures will guide you through good design principles to enable you to build modular, extensible solutions.
Each iteration must be demonstrated on the scheduled date. Late demonstrations will not be accepted. A mark will be awarded at the end of each iteration, which will go towards the overall mark for the group project. The final demo of the group project will be conducted in week 13.
Tutors will continually monitor the GitHub repositories to see the team's progress and individual member's contribution to the group project.
Periodically, online quizzes will be released and students will have the opportunity to complete the quiz at their own pace by the specified due-date. The quiz questions will be similar in style to the multiple-choice questions that students will be asked in the final exam and will test the content covered in the lectures in the previous weeks. Quizzes will contribute to 3 % of the overall course mark.
There will be a centrally timetabled final exam which will in your UNSW exam timetable. The exam will contain a mixture of multiple choice questions, "theory" and design questions and programming exercises. More specific details of the exam will be provided through the course.
There is a hurdle requirement on the final exam. If you do not score at least 45% on the exam, you cannot pass this course. If your overall course score exceeds 50%, despite scoring very poorly (<40%) on the exam, the hurdle will be enforced via a grade of UF. Of course, if your overall course score is less than 50%, then your grade will be FL.
If you cannot attend the final exam because of illness or misadventure, then you must submit a Special Consideration request, with documentation, through MyUNSW within 48 hours of the exam. If your request is reasonable, then you will be awarded a Supplementary Exam. If your overall course mark is between 47 and 50, then you will also be awarded a Supplementary Exam.
The Student Code of Conduct ( Information , Policy ) sets out what the University expects from students as members of the UNSW community. As well as the learning, teaching and research environment, the University aims to provide an environment that enables students to achieve their full potential and to provide an experience consistent with the University's values and guiding principles. A condition of enrolment is that students inform themselves of the University's rules and policies affecting them, and conduct themselves accordingly.
In particular, students have the responsibility to observe standards of equity and respect in dealing with every member of the University community. This applies to all activities on UNSW premises and all external activities related to study and research. This includes behaviour in person as well as behaviour on social media, for example Facebook groups set up for the purpose of discussing UNSW courses or course work. Behaviour that is considered in breach of the Student Code Policy as discriminatory, sexually inappropriate, bullying, harassing, invading another's privacy or causing any person to fear for their personal safety is serious misconduct and can lead to severe penalties, including suspension or exclusion from UNSW.
If you have any concerns, you may raise them with your lecturer, or approach the School Ethics Officer , Grievance Officer , or one of the student representatives.
Plagiarism is defined as using the words or ideas of others and presenting them as your own. UNSW and CSE treat plagiarism as academic misconduct, which means that it carries penalties as severe as being excluded from further study at UNSW. There are several on-line sources to help you understand what plagiarism is and how it is dealt with at UNSW:
Make sure that you read and understand these. Ignorance is not accepted as an excuse for plagiarism. In particular, you are also responsible that your assignment files are not accessible by anyone but you by setting the correct permissions in your CSE directory and code repository, if using. Note also that plagiarism includes paying or asking another person to do a piece of work for you and then submitting it as your own work.
UNSW has an ongoing commitment to fostering a culture of learning informed by academic integrity. All UNSW staff and students have a responsibility to adhere to this principle of academic integrity. Plagiarism undermines academic integrity and is not tolerated at UNSW. Plagiarism at UNSW is defined as using the words or ideas of others and passing them off as your own.
If you haven't done so yet, please take the time to read the full text of
The pages below describe the policies and procedures in more detail:
You should also read the following page which describes your rights and responsibilities in the CSE context:
If your work in this course is affected by unforeseen adverse circumstances, you should apply for Special Consideration through MyUNSW, including documentation on how you have been affected. If your request is reasonable and your work has clearly been impacted, then
Note the use of the word "may". None of the above is guaranteed. It depends on you making a convincing case that the circumstances have clearly impacted your ability to work.
If you are registered with Disability Services, please forward your documentation to Aarthi Natarajan within the first two weeks of semester.
| Item | Marks |
| Quizzes | 3% |
| Tutorial_Lab_Sesions | 12% (Tuts - 2%, Labs - 10%) |
| Assignment 1 (Individual) | 5% |
| Group Project | 30% |
| Final Exam | 50% |
Lab marks vary each week. Your total Lab mark is computed by summing all of your lab marks and mapping into a mark out of 12.
Total marks for the group project will be the sum of the marks obtained at each iteration demo and the final demonstration.
Your final mark for this course will be computed using the above assessments as follows:
| Course_Work_Mark | = | tut_lab_mark + quiz_mark + assignment_1_ mark + group_project_mark | out of 50 |
| Exam_Mark | = | Final Exam Mark | out of 50 |
| Exam_OK | = | ExamMark ≥ 22.5/50 | true/false |
| Final_Mark | = | Course_Work_Mark + Exam_Mark | out of 100 |
| Final_Grade | = |
UF, if !Exam_OK
FL, if Final_Mark< 50/100 PS, if 50/100 ≤ Final_Mark < 65/100 CR, if 65/100 ≤ Final_Mark < 75/100 DN, if 75/100 ≤ Final_Mark < 85/100 HD, if Final_Mark ≥ 85/100 |
Students are eligible for a Supplementary Exam if and only if:
A Supplementary Exam will not be awarded for any other reason
The following is a tentative schedule of when course topics will be covered. As this is the first offering of the course, this will most likely vary as we develop the course material.
| Week | Lectures |
| 1 |
Course Overview, Assessment Criteria
Introduction to Software Engineering, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Team Collaboration, GitHub Overview and Demo Introduction to Python programming |
| 2 |
Requirements Engineering ( Requirements Analysis/ Feasibility Study/Requirements Specification)
Requirements Analysis using use-cases and user-stories Introduction to UML More Python Programming |
| 3 |
Object Oriented Design - Objects, Classes, Encapsulation, Inheritance, Relationships
Object Oriented Programming with Python Domain modelling using class diagrams Release of Assignment 1 |
| 4 |
Introduction to World Wide Web, HTTP Request/Response
Front-end UI Design based on HTML/CSS Introduction to Flask |
| 5 |
Software Development Methodologies (Waterfall, RUP, Agile methods - XP, Scrum)
Software Architecture and Design (Overview, Architectural styles) Building a software application - understanding the choice of development methodology and architecture Release of Group Project |
| - | MID-SESSION BREAK |
| 6 |
OO Design Principles - SOLID principles, Modularity, Cohesion, Coupling
Agile Design Techniques |
| 7 |
OO Design Principles continued..
Applying OO Design to a practical case-study |
| 8 |
Software testing and validation using testing frameworks
Test Driven Development Exception Handling Unit Tests, Integration Tests and User Acceptance Tests) |
| 9 |
Overview of databases
Conceptual Design and data-modelling based on ER models |
| 10 |
Relational models
Mapping ER Model to Relational Model Overview of relational databases, tables, primary keys and referential integrity |
| 11 |
Understanding the importance of non-functional requirements
Introducing software application security Guest Lecture |
| 12 |
Course Review, Final Exam Guidelines
|
There is no single text book that covers all of the material in this course at the right level of detail and using the same technology base as we are. The lecture notes should provide sufficient detail to introduce topics, and you will then study them in further depth in the tutorials, labs and group project.
There are also many online resources available, and we will provide links to the most useful ones. Some are listed below. If you find others, please post links in the Comments section on the Course Outline page.
Some suggestions for books that cover at least some of the topics in this course
This course is evaluated each session using the myExperience system. However, you are couraged to provide feedback during the semester so that we can address the problems ASAP. In the previous offering of this courses, students noted that the group project was complex and must have higher weighting towards the overall course marks. Based on their comments, we have simplified the requirements of the group project to be proportional to the marks allocated towards the project.
Resource created Sunday 18 February 2018, 11:16:31 AM, last modified Wednesday 15 May 2019, 07:49:32 PM.