Systems Engineering

Question 1

Software Engineering

Answer 1

concerned with
- technical processes of software dev
- project management activities
- development of tools, methods and theories supporting software dev

Question 2

What is the main benefit of using Software Engineering Principles?

Answer 2

Better quality code

Question 3

When does software development take place within the software engineering lifecycle?

Answer 3

1. software spec
2. software dev < < <
3. software testing
4. software documentation
5. software maintenance

Question 4

What are the 4 advantages of using software engineering principles?

Answer 4

• Maintainability
• Dependability and Security
• Efficiency
• Acceptability

Question 5

Maintainability:

Answer 5

• software written to be able to adapt to changing needs
• changing needs of the customer and business
  environment is inevitable
• code design and written to be easily to changed (without refactoring and completely rewriting)

Question 6

Dependability and Security:

Answer 6

• dependability = reliable, secure and safe software
• software should not cause physical or economic damage in the case of system failure
• malicious users should not be able to access or damage system

Question 7

Efficiency:

Answer 7

• software should make efficient use of system resources
• responsiveness, processing time, memory, usage

Question 8

Acceptability:

Answer 8

• software must be acceptable for its users
• understandable, usable, compatible with OSs
• design for adults different to children

Question 9

What are the 4 main aspects that make up software engineering?

Answer 9

• software specification
• software development
• software validation
• software evolution

Question 10

Software specification

Answer 10

• customers and developers define software product to be developed
• scope, functional requirements, constraints

Question 11

software development

Answer 11

• process of designing and creating the software product
• engineers/developers programming

Question 12

Software validation:

Answer 12

• checking software to ensure it meets requirements
• testing

Question 13

software evolution

Answer 13

• modifying software to reflect changing requirements for customer and market
• maintenance

Question 14

What 3 factors make up software engineering diversity?

Answer 14

• heterogeneity
• social and business change
• security and trust
• considered when producing software to ensure software meets standards

Question 15

Heterogeneity:

Answer 15

• systems have to operate as distributed systems across networks, including different types of computing devices and operating systems, different languages, etc.
• need to develop techniques for building dependable software that can cope with this heterogeneity

Question 16

Social and Business change:

Answer 16

• businesses and society changes rapidly with emerging economies
• software needs to keep up with this changes
• new software needs to be built rapidly
• traditional techniques are time consuming
• need to be able to reduce time for which software is able to produce value for its customers

Question 17

Security and Trust:

Answer 17

• software is present in all aspects of our lives
• needs to be trusted
• especially remote systems
• need to protect users from malicious users and maintain information security

Question 18

How can these factors be managed?

Answer 18

• use software engineering processes
• use different techniques for different system types
• when developing software, software engineering principles need to be adhered to

Question 19

What is true for any software system? (4)

Answer 19

• the development process needs to be managed and understood
• there needs to be focus on dependability and performance
• software requirements are understood and managed
• effective use/reuse of resources

Question 20

Project management processes:

Answer 20

• help development of software systems

Question 21

Give examples of areas making use of project management processes:

Answer 21

• planning
• communication
• people management
• methods/methodologies
• tools
• ethics

Question 22

Methods for software development:

Answer 22

• different methodologies exist
• each needed for specific project to ensure good software quality

Question 23

6 Development life cycle phases

Answer 23

1. analysis - requirements, PO, PM, BA, CEO
2. design - architecture, System architect, UX designers
3. development - programming, engineers, developers
4. testing - testing, solutions architect, QA, DevOps
5. deployment - release, DevOps
6. maintenance - software maintenance, users, testers

Question 24

Waterfall methodology stages:

Answer 24

1 discovery
2 design
3 coding
4 testing
5 deployment
6 maintenance

Question 25

Typical agile methodology stages:

Answer 25

1 plan
2 design
3 develop
4 test
5 deploy
6 review
7 repeat 1-6 in increments or iterations until software is complete
8 launch

Question 26

Ethics (4):

Answer 26

• confidentiality - respect employers and clients confidentiality
• competence - do not misrepresent competence
• intellectual property rights - aware of law governing use of IP
• computer misuse - do not use technical skills for malice