Softwaretechnik / Software Engineering (Lecture)

Quicklinks: News - Online-ing - Formalia - Plan - Links & Literature

News

• 2022-07-26: cancelled lecture on July 27 (covid)
• 2022-05-24: added exam date
• 2022-04-27: added bbb-link, and link to ilias course
  
• 2022-04-25: ilias course online.
• 2022-04-04: homepage online.

Organization

The organization of the Softwaretechnik / Software Engineering course follows the usual rhythm of lectures, exercises, and tutorials in the same way as if we were having in-class sessions (we call this the "as if" principle).

• Lectures: We will have a schedule with lecture days and their planned topics. Each time you go to the ILIAS module at a specific lecture day and time (as given by the schedule below), you will find the corresponding recording (and the PDF with the annotated slides).  In fact, we will immediately upload the whole group of (two to four) lectures that corresponds to one exercise sheet (see the dependency illustration below).  It is then up to you to choose the studying schedule that works best for you.  One possible schedule is to keep one lecture per lecture day, just as if we had in-class sessions and you just could not make it to the classroom.
  If you have questions about the lecture, you can put them into the ILIAS forum.
• Exercise sheets: We will have one exercise sheet for each block of two to four lectures.   Again, it is up to you to choose your own schedule to work on the solutions.  Generally, the first exercise can be done with input from the first lecture, etc. (see dependency illustration below). 
• Tutorial sessions: We will have live online tutorial sessions in one video meeting per tutorial group (accessible via ILIAS) every second week (modulo public holidays and breaks).
  The tutorial sessions address the fact that Software-Engineering is for a very good part about people interacting with people (like clients with developers, like programmers with designers, like teams of requirements engineers, etc.; cf. [Ludewig, Lichter, 2008]) and so that is exactly what we will practice in the tutorial sessions: the use of professional terminology in order to be able to efficiently and effectively communicate among software engineering professionals about software engineering problems and solutions.
  There will be a fixed, uniform exercise submission deadline for all tutorial groups.
• Every other week, you will receive the correction of your solution; i.e., your friendly tutor will provide feedback on individual errors, mistakes, or misconceptions that are not covered by the discussions in the tutorial sessions.  The info in the feedback will form a complement of the info conveyed in the tutorial sessions (and not a replacement; i.e., the info in the feedback may be unintelligible without the info conveyed in the tutorial sessions).
• We will assemble the tutorial groups after the submission of Exercise Sheet 0 (which we will make available on Monday, 25th of April, the latest).  From that point on, we will have fixed tutorial groups. 
  You make contact your tutor for questions and concerns (during the teaching period and after, until the exam day).
• Overall, the course covers four, mostly self-contained topic areas. Hence, if, for some reason, you get behind and you don't have the time to catch up immediately, you will be able to skip the remaining lectures or exercises in the current topic area and to "jump on the train" at the beginning of the next topic area (and catch up later).

The following illustration (click to enlarge) shows dependencies between exercise sheets and lectures and may be useful for your schedule planning.  Principally, one would like to see each topic area closed with a corresponding tutorial session, yet the obstacles in form of public holidays does not always allow such clear splits:

Your question about online-ing this course unanswered?  Please contact us by mail or via the ILIAS forum.

Formalia

Prerequisites for exam admission, form of the final exam will be announced here.

Admission criteria

50% of the total points are sufficient.

Exercise Submission Scheme

The exercise sheets are online early in order to allow you to be aware of the tasks while following the lecture.
Please submit your solutions via ILIAS (log in with RZ account, not TF Pool account).

Exam

There will be a written exam:

• Date & time: tba.

• 90 min.
• Location: tba.
• Permitted in the exam:
  max. 1 sheet of paper, max. size A4, max. 200g/qm quality, all sides may be used (written/printed/painted/...).
• It's one exam for all participants (BSc, MSc, ..., all).
  
  

Schedule

Note: the following plan is tentative, that is, the assignment of events and topics to dates may be subject to (if possible: mild) changes.

• Wed, 27.4.: VL 01 "Introduction" - Exercise Sheets 0 & 1 online
  Definitions of Software Engineering etc.; course content overview; formalia.
• Fri, 29.4.: VL 02 "Software Metrics"
  Software metrics; properties of useful metrics; kinds of scales; examples: LOC and McCabe.
• Wed, 4.5.: VL 03a "More Metrics & Cost Estimation" - Exercise Sheet 2 online
  Subjective metrics, Goal-Question-Metric approach; Cost and Deadlines, Expert and Algorithmic Cost Estimation.
• Fri, 6.5.: Live Online Tutorial 1
• Wed,  11.5.: VL 03b "Software Project Management"
  Development Project; Activities, Roles, Artefacts; From Processes to Procedure and Process Modes.
• Fri,  13.5.: VL 04 "Procedure and Process Models"
  Waterfall and Spiral; Prototype-based; Evolutionary, Incremental, Iterative; V-Model XT; Agile Processes; process metrics CMM(I) and SPICE.
• Wed, 18.5.: VL 05 "Requirements Engineering" - Exercise Sheet 3 online
  Requirements Engineering basics: the RE problem, the software peoples' view on requirements; quality criteria for requirements and their (natural language) documentation.
• Fri, 20.5.: Live Online Tutorial 2
  
• Wed,  25.5.: VL 06 "Formal Methods for Requirements Engineering".
• Fri,  27.5.: VL 07 "Decision Tables"
  One example of a formal notation for requirements and its use: decision tables (DT); formal definitions for completeness, consistency, determinism, etc..
• Wed, 1.6.: VL 08 "Use Cases and Scenarios, Live Sequence Charts" - Exercise Sheet 4 online
  Scenarios and Anti-Scenarios for requirements analysis; notations User Story, Use Case, Use Case Diagram, first half of Sequence Diagrams (abstract syntax, cuts and firedsets); Second half of the 'Sequence Diagram' story (TBA construction).
• Fri,  3.6.: Live Online Tutorial 3
• Wed, 8.6.: pentecost break
• Fri, 10.6.: pentecost break
• Wed, 15.6.: VL 09 "Live Sequence Charts Cont'd & RE Wrapup"
  LSCs and software; Requirements Engineering wrap-up.
• Fri, 17.6.: VL 10 "Structural Software Modelling I"
  Software Architecture; Views and viewpoints; Class Diagrams.
• Wed, 22.6.: VL 11 "Structural Software Modelling II" - Exercise Sheet 5 online
  Partial vs. Complete Object Diagrams, Proto-OCL.
• Fri, 24.6.: Live Online Tutorial 4
• Wed, 29.6.: VL 12 "Behavioural Software Modelling"
  Communicating Finite Automata; Uppaal Demo; Uppaal Query Language.
• Fri,  1.7.: VL 13 "UML State Machines, MBSE/MDSE, Design Principles"
  CFA "at work"; MBSE/MDSE; Implementing CFA; an outlook on UML Statemachines; Principles of Software Design: Modularisation, information hiding, data encapsulation etc..
• Wed,  6.7.: VL 14 "Architecture & Design Patterns, Software Quality Assurance" - Exercise Sheet 6 online
  Architectural patterns (layers, pipeline, MVC); Design Patterns; Test Case,  Test suite, Pass/Fail, true/false Positives and Negatives.
• Fri,  8.7.:  Live Online Tutorial 5
• Wed, 13.7.: VL 15 "Testing"
  Coverage measures, Model-based Testing.
• Fri, 15.7.: VL 16 "Software Verification"
  Notions of correctness; Formal verification of software: the Hoare calculus; Software Model-Checking, VCC Demo.
• Wed, 20.7.: VL 17 "Wrapup & Questions"
  Runtime Verification; Review; Lecture recap and time for questions.
• Fri, 22.7.: Live Online Tutorial 6
• Wed, 27.7.: Live Online Session
  
• Fri, 29.7.: --

Links & Literature

• Software Engineering Textbooks
  • Ludewig, J. and Lichter, H. (2013). Software Engineering. dpunkt.verlag, 3. edition.
    Main inspiration for the lecture; unfortunately only available in German. Available as e-Book via UB.
  • Sommerville, I. (2010). Software Engineering. Pearson, 10. edition.
    The international "classic".  Available as e-Book via UB. (Book also available in German.)
  • Balzert, H. (2009). Lehrbuch der Softwaretechnik: Basiskonzepte und Requirements Engineering. Springer Spektrum, 3. edition.
    The german "classic", part 1.  Available as e-Book via UB.
  • Balzert, H. (2010). Lehrbuch der Softwaretechnik: Entwurf, Implementierung, Installation und Betrieb. Springer Spektrum, 3. edition.
    The german "classic", part 2. Avaliable as e-Book via UB.
  • Bjørner, D. (2006). Software Engineering 1 - Abstraction and Modelling. Springer.
    One of the few formal methods textbooks, part 1.
  • Bjørner, D. (2006). Software Engineering 2 - Specification of Systems and Languages. Springer.
    One of the few formal methods textbooks, part 2.
  • Bjørner, D. (2006). Software Engineering 3 - Domains, Requirements, and Software Design. Springer.
    One of the few formal methods textbooks, part 3.
• Introduction
  • Bauer, F. L. (1971). Software Engineering. In: IFIP Congress (1), pages 530-538.
    Historic (type-writer typed) lecture notes by F. L. Bauer, one of the software engineering pioneers who is said to have brought up to the term 'software engineering' on the NATO Science Committee meeting in Garmisch, 1968, in response to the 'software crisis'.
  • Bjørner, D. and Havelund, K. (2014). 40 years of formal methods. . Presentation slides, UNSW, Sydney, 19. May 2014.
    A brief introduction of the term "formal methods", its historical and present obstacles and hindrances, and an outlook.
  • Buschermöhle, R. et al. (2006). success - Erfolgs- und Misserfolgsfaktoren bei der Durchführung von Hard- und Softwareentwicklungsprojekten in Deutschland. Version 1.1 (source site).
    A wealth of empirical data with a thorough evaluation wrt. a set of hypothesis on correlations of factors in software engineering.
  • Jones, C. B. et al., editors (2011). Dependable and Historic Computing - Essays Dedicated to Brian Randell on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday, volume 6875 of LNCS, Springer.
    Timeless insights on software engineering from the early days, including an article by software engineering pioneer D. L. Parnas and the dinner talk by H. Kopetz. Available as e-Book via UB.
  • Most ISO/IEEE/etc. standards are unfortunately not freely available.
  • Lamport, L. (2015). Who Builds a House without Drawing Blueprints?. CACM; 58(4): 38-41.
    A somewhat polemic essay arguing for better planning in software engineering by 2013 ACM Turing Award winner (and LaTeX author) Leslie Lamport; not so far off from our approach to the software engineering lecture...
• Project Management, Process Models, Metrics
  • Brooks, F. P. (1996). The Mythical Man-Month - Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition. Addison-Wesley.
    Some say "if you want to read only one book on the management of software development projects, let it be this" (without being the author or otherwise sponsored by the publisher).  An e-Book of the 1st edition from 1974 is freely available here.
  • Douglass, B. P. (1999). Doing Hard Time, Addison-Wesley.
    Spiral-shaped development process using formal modelling and analysis especially for (safety) critical, reactive, timed systems.
  • Wheeler, D. A. (2006). The Linux Kernel: It’s Worth More!
    A COCOMO estimation of effort for the Linux kernel 2.6.  Article includes a link to the used tool SLOCCount.
  • Karn, J. S., & Cowling, A. J. (2005). A Study into the Effect of Disruptions on the Performance of Software Engineering Teams. In the Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering, (ISESE 2005).
  • Behfar, K. J., Peterson, R. S., Mannix, E. A., Trochim,  W.M. (2008). The critical role of conflict resolution in teams: a close look at the links between conflict type, conflict management strategies, and team outcomes. J Appl Psychol.; 93(1):170-88. doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.93.1.170.
  • V-Modell XT Authors (2006). V-Modell XT, Version 1.4.
    The V-Modell XT reference document (in German); an English document for V-Modell XT, version 1.3, is available on the same homepage. A tool to support tailoring is available here.
    (Version 2.0 (in German); may not be subject of the lecture since it seems not to have an English translation so far.)
  • CMMI Product Team (2010). CMMI for Development, Version 1.3.
    Definition of the CMMI-DEV process metrics.  German translation is available here. An introdution to the appraisal procedure is available here.
• Requirements Engineering, Live Sequence Charts
  
• Rupp, Ch., die SOPHISTen (2014). Requirements-Engineering und -Management. Hanser.
  An extensive and comprehensive discussion of all aspects of Requirements Enginering, from formal notations, over quality criteria, recommendations for natural language requirements, to psychological aspects like human perception and conflicts among clients, which may show up during requirements engineering.  The book's content builds on the main author's experience as general manager of SOPHIST GmbH, a company offering Requirements Engineering.  Unfortunately only available in German. But: Available as e-Book via UB.
• Damm, W., Harel, D. (2001). LSCs: Breathing Life into Message Sequence Charts. FMSD; 19(1): 45-80, Kluwer Academic Press.
  The original work on Life Sequence Charts.
• Klose, J. (2003): Live Sequence Charts - A Graphical Formalism for the Specification of Communication Behavior. PhD thesis, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg.
  The original work on the TBA-semantics of LSCs as used in the lecture.
• Typesetting Live Sequence Charts: lsc.sty on CTAN (and included in TeX Live).
• Architecture & Design, Modelling
  
• Jacobson, I. (1992). Object-Oriented Software Engineering: A Use CASE Approach. Addison-Wesley.
  By the inventor and early advocate of use cases and use case diagrams, which were later included in UML. 20 years old, odd-looking notation, yet the basic messages remain valid.
• Kastens, U., Kleine Büning, H. (2014). Modellierung - Grundlagen und formale Methoden, Zweite Auflage, Carl Hanser Verlag.
  General Discussion of Modelling, not focusing on UML, but also considering plain set-theory, graphs, Petri nets, and their use for modelling tasks.
• Buschman, F., Beunier, R., Rohnert, H., Sommerlad, P., Stal, M. (1996). Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture, Volume 1, A System of Patterns. Wiley.
  Actually closer to the content of Lecture 14 than the (more famous) standard textbook on design patterns (Gamma et al.) The concrete examples may provoke nostalgic feelings ("this sounds soo early 90s of the last century") but the basic messages still hold. Available as e-Book via UB.
• UML
  • B. Dobing, J. Parsons: How UML is used, Communications of the ACM, 49(5):109-114, 2006.
    This survey supports the relevance of our choice of diagrams to be considered in the lecture.
  • OMG (2011). Unified Modeling Language: Infrastructure. Version 2.4.1.
    The UML standard, basic concepts.  May take some getting-used-to.
  • OMG (2011). Unified Modeling Language: Superstructure. Version 2.4.1.
    Defines all the diagrams using concepts from the infrastructure document.
  • B. Oesterreich: Analyse und Design mit UML 2.1, 8. Auflage, Oldenbourg, 2006.
    Standard introduction into UML notation (only informal semantics).
  • H. Stoerrle: UML 2 fuer Studenten, Pearson Studium Verlag, 2005.
    And another one of the like.
    (avaible as e-book via UB)
  • OMG (2014). Object Constraint Language. Version 2.4.
    Our Proto-OCL semantics is inspired by Appendix A (finally something more formal...).
  • Kleppe, A., Warmer, J. (2004). The Object Constraint Language. 2nd Edition, Addison-Wesley..
    A more palatable presentation of OCL.
• Formal Verification
• Apt, K.R., Olderog, E.-R. (1994). Programmverifikation. Springer-Verlag.
  The formal verification part of Lecture 15 is following the thorough presentation in this (highly recommendable) book.  Also available in English.
• (2015) The VCC Manual.
  A draft document to become a manual for VCC.  For the exercises, it should not be necessary to revert to this document too much, the content of the lecture should be sufficient.
• Cohen, E., Hillebrand, A., Tobies, S., Moskal, M., Schulte, W. (2015). Verifying C Programs: A VCC Tutorial. Technical Report.
  A tutorial on VCC, distributed with the VCC sources.  Again: for the exercises, you should not need much more than discussed in the lecture.  We're only touching the surface of VCC.
• Miscellaneous
  • O. Laitenberger, C. Atkinson: Generalizing Perspective-based Inspection to handle Object-Oriented Development Artifacts, In: Proc. ICSE '99, 494-503, IEEE CS-Press.
    Reading techniques philosophy.
  • G. H. Travassos, F. Shull, J. Carver, V. R. Basili: Reading Techniques for OO Design Inspections, Technical Report CS-TR-4353, University of Maryland, 2002.
    Concrete reading techniques.