Important!

Please note that this page is informational, and does not replace the official Module Information Pack (MIP). All students attending this module must carefully read the MIP which can be accessed online via Blackboard.

Logistics

Module leader:	Nearchos Paspallis
When and where:	Refer to the timetable (requires login)
Syllabus:	Refer to the Blackboard for the syllabus, assignments, etc (requires login)

Module content

• Quality
  Quality criteria: meeting user needs, delivery on time, robustness, maintainability
  Process and product quality
  Standards<
• Software lifecycles
  Comparison of software life cycles (including agile and traditional lifecycles)
• Writing a software requirements specification
  Role play to elicit requirements from a customer
  Interview techniques
  Structuring the document based on published standards
• Developing a user interface including:
  User needs analysis
  Colour, Font, Navigation, Affordance of controls
  User error recovery
• Designing an application
  Identifying objects
  UML (to include use-cases, class and sequence diagrams)
  Use of an appropriate diagramming tool
  
• Testing
  The process of developing an appropriate test strategy
  Comparison of testing with reviews and inspections
  Black and White box testing
  Test harnesses and Function stubs
  Test-driven development
  Usability evaluation techniques
  

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, students are expected to:

• To develop communication skills to effectively elicit requirements from a customer
• To explore alternative approaches to identifying software requirements
• To emphasise the importance of HCI in the software development process
• To develop a systematic approach to software quality through testing and standards
• To enable the students to compare and contrast software development lifecycles

Resources

Tudor, D.J. & I.J (2010), The DSDM Student Workbook, Galatea Training Services Ltd. ISBN 0954307135

Sommerville, I. (2010) 9th ed., Software Engineering, Addison-Wesley

Fowler, M (2003) 3rd ed., UML Distilled, Addison-Wesley

Preece, J, et-al. (2011) 3nd ed., Interaction Design: Beyond Human-computer Interaction, John Wiley and Sons

Larman, Craig (2003) Agile and Iterative Development, Addison WesleyISBN 0131111558

Many more e-books on software development are available through UCLan Cyprus’ library.

Additional material (including lecture slides and hand-outs) will be available in Blackboard

Collaboration

Students are encouraged to study and learn in groups. However, individual assignments should be the result of their personal effort (unless group work is explicitly asked).

As a principle, you should follow Gilligan's Island Rule: you can discuss assignments with your classmates, but you should not take any notes (electronic or not) from these meetings, in order to be able to fulfil your assignment independently using your own undestanding of the lectures and the group meetings.

General rules

In addition to the general rules of the University, you should also respect the following rules:

• Attending the lectures is mandatory.
• Students should respect the right of their classmates to attend without disruptions or unnecessary interruptions and thus you should not arrive late (or leave early) unless absolutely necessary.
• You are asked to respect the intellectual copyright legislation, concerning copying and using software and books (in electronic or print form).
• Extensions to assignments will not be granted. In exceptional situations, you should consult the Year-1 Tutor.
• Plagiarism is a serious offense. The University uses plagiarism detection software for all assignments and offenders are subject to the University's rules concerning plagiarism. More details about what plagiarism is (and is not) can be found in your MIP, which is available on Blackboard.