Cs 428 Midterm Study

Front 1

(T/F) Software engineering is a process

Back 1

false

Front 2

Give two definitions of software engineering

Back 2

1. The establishment and use of sound engineering principles in order to obtain economically software that is reliable and works on real machines.

2. The application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software

Front 3

List two agile processes

List two formal processes

Back 3

Agile: XP, scrum
Formal: Rational Unified Process, cleanroom

Front 4

What are some non-functional requirements of a project?

Back 4

performance, usability, maintainability, technology

Front 5

What does a use case diagram show?

Back 5

actors and use cases, system scope and boundaries

Front 6

What is a use case?

Back 6

text - a form of writing. describes the system's behavior as it responds to a request from an actor.

describes the sequence of events that happen when the system responds to a request. can describe alternatives and errors.

Front 7

What are the parts of a use case?

Back 7

Primary actor

goal

normal steps

alternative steps (errors, options)

Front 8

What are the different ways of writing use cases?

Back 8

-user stories
-actor goal list
-use case briefs
-casual use cases
-"fully dressed" use cases

Front 9

What are the components of a fully dressed use case

Back 9

-primary actor
-goal in context
-scope
-level
-stakeholders and interests
-precondition
-minimal guarantees
-trigger
-extensions

Front 10

What is traceability?

Back 10

the ability to trace the effect of a requirement

Front 11

(T/F) use case goals can fail

Back 11

true. use cases describe a set of ways for carrying out the goal, and several ways of failing

Front 12

What are the primary project killers?

Back 12

-requirements mistakes
-improper schedule

Front 13

(T/F) the costs of fixing a bug in deployment is cheaper than fixing a bug in design phase

Back 13

false

Front 14

What is an actor

Back 14

role of someone or something that interacts with system

Front 15

What is a statistical tool, used in project management, that is designed to analyze and represent the tasks involved in completing a given project.

Back 15

PERT

Front 16

a common technique for representing the phases and activities of a project work breakdown structure (WBS), so they can be understood by a wide audience all over the world.

Back 16

Gantt charts

Front 17

Why is software management distinct from other engineering management?

Back 17

Software in intangible. Projects may be novel or innovative so there is no body of experience to guide their management. Software processes are not as mature as traditional engineering processes

Front 18

___________ is now recognized as one of the most important project management tasks

Back 18

risk management

Front 19

What are the elements of risk management?

Back 19

identifying and assessing major project risks to establish the probability that they will occur and the consequences for the project if that risk does arise. You should make plans to avoid, manage, or deal with likely risks if or when they arise

Front 20

The ______ is an agreed statement of the system requirements. It should be organized so that both system customers and software developers can use it.

Back 20

software requirements document

Front 21

What is requirements elicitation and analysis?

Back 21

an iterative process that can be represented as a spiral of activities - requirements discovery, requirements classification and organization, requirements negotiation, and requirements documentation

Front 22

Give one advantage and one disadvantage of PERT charts

Back 22

Advantage: explicitly defines and makes visibly dependencies
-facilitates identification of the critical path

Disadvantage:
-Can be large amounts of individual dependency relationships
-Can be large and unwieldy

Front 23

What are the three different types of risks?

Back 23

-Technical risks
-Project risks
-Business risks

Front 24

What are the non-functional requirements?

Back 24

-security
-reliability
-efficiency
-usability
-scalability
-maintainability
-performance
-usability
-technology

Front 25

What are some advantages of a distributed VCS over a traditional VCS?

Back 25

-No need to connect to a central server to commit
-No central point of failure
-Merges do not need to be resolved before a commit
-Better performance due to local repositories

Front 26

Why have distributed VCSs not been adopted?

Back 26

-Organizational intertia
-Need for centralized control
-Need for traceability
-Need to integrate with other systems

Front 27

How is software architecture created when using RUP?

Back 27

archited elaborates a skeleton system

Front 28

How is software architecture created when using XP

Back 28

user stories. emerges as the system is developed and refactored, everyone is an architect

Front 29

List some responsibilities of a software architect other than designing architect?

Back 29

-chief builder
-create conceptual integrity
-communicating with clients / developers
-leader
-creating standards
-recognizing reuse

Front 30

What are two reasons why it is not possible for software projects to achieve a fully rational process?

Back 30

-requirements change
-unclear at the beginning what we'll build at the end
-development teams change
-people make mistakes

Front 31

What is the difference between requirments and specification

Back 31

-requirements -> non-technical perspective perspective of the user

-specification -> perspective of the developer and/or tester

Front 32

What is Architecture?

Back 32

1) High-level design (components = modules
2) Pervasive patterns (components = lower level objects)

Front 33

Why is architecture important?

Back 33

1) key to meeting non-functional requirements
2) Provides a common view for all stakeholders
3) Divide the system into modules

Front 34

What is the Architectural Trade-off Analysis Method (ATAM)?

Back 34

 Collect scenarios (architectural use cases)
 Collect requirements, constraints, and
environment descriptions
 Describe candidate architectural styles
 Evaluate quality attributes
 Identify sensitivity of quality attributes
 Critique candidate architectures

Front 35

What are the advantages of RDBMS (Relational Database Management System)?

Back 35

1) Safety, concurrency, integration, queries
2) Standard
- Compatible tools
- Expert developers
3) Scalable (with cost)

Front 36

What are the disadvantages of RDBMS (Relational Database Management System)?

Back 36

1) Performance bottleneck
2) Object-relational impedance mismatch
Must convert between tables and objects
3) Tables not good for trees and graphs

Front 37

What are two ways to manage risks in XP?

Back 37

-iteration
-do the simplest thing that can possibly work
-customer picks most important stories

Front 38

Some believe that quality is all about conformance to requirements and standards. Argue
why that isn’t true by showing what is missing from that statement

Back 38

1. Requirements and standards can evolve/change over time
2. Requirements can be unachievabl

Front 39

Give an example where use cases would not work well for capturing requirements

Back 39

A system that has only one use case or one that has very little interaction with the
stakeholders e.g. a compiler

Front 40

Give two differences between use cases and user stories in XP

Back 40

Context - Use cases include more context by including the actors, scope, level whereas


Completeness - Use cases handle the main success scenario and extensions whereas
user stories usually only focus on the final goal (how would you know how to
handle the corner cases?)
user stories don’t account for those


Traceability Use cases can refer to previous/future ones to show some dependencies
whereas user stories usually are pretty self-contained and isolated

Front 41

Parnas shows two ways to decompose the KWIC Index Production System. The first
method roughly resembles a pipeline model where information was being transferred between modules sequentially. According to Parnas, what are three potential problems of
this decomposition

Back 41

Changeability - Changing one module has a cascading effect on the other modules


Independent Development -Because the modules are tightly coupled, it is hard to
develop one with affecting the others


Comprehensibility - Hard to understand – in isolation – what one module is doing
without first understanding how other modules work/interact

Front 42

Even though the first method for decomposition exhibits those problems, why is it nevertheless a likely choice of decomposition among programmers

Back 42

Because this is usually how we think of the problem – progressing in stages where each
step follows from a previous one. It’s also a simple approach for a first design

Front 43

The paper also presents a second method for decomposition which, Parnas claims, addresses the problems with the first approach. What was the basis of the second method of
decomposition? What was one potential problem of this second decomposition if it were
implemented naively

Back 43

The second approach is based on information hiding between modules. If implemented
naively, the overhead of passing information between the different modules could be a
bottleneck that would slow the system down

Front 44

Describe two ways in which modelling notations such as UML are beneficial?

Back 44

Modelling notations help developers communicate.

Modelling notations provide documentation.

Modelling notations help find errors.

Modelling notations can be used to generate code.

Front 45

What are the three stereotypes in a use case diagram?

Back 45

Boundary stereotype: UI associated with actor

Control stereotype: control associated with use case

Entity stereotype: persistent with real objects

Front 46

How do you achieve good software abstractions?

Back 46

Get them from someone else (read lots of boks, read lots of code)

Generalize from examples.

Look for duplication. KILL IT!

Front 47

What is architecture?

Back 47

High-level design and pervasive patterns.

Front 48

Why is architecture important?

Back 48

Key to meeting non-functional requirements.

Provides a common view for all stakeholders.

Divides the system into modules.

Front 49

What is Architectural Trade Off Method?

Back 49

Collect architectural use cases.

Collect constraints, requirements, and environment descriptions.

Describe candidate architectural styles.

Evaluate quality attributes.

Identify sensitivity of quality attributes.

Critique candidate architectures.

Front 50

What are some common risks associate with software development?

Back 50

Takes too long.

Customer runs out of money.

Problem is harder than thought.