CSE 403, Winter 2009: Software Engineering

• Lecture MWF 2:30-3:20PM in EEB 045
• Section Th 2:30-3:20PM in SIG 224
• Instructor David Notkin (notkin@cs or notkin@u)
• Office hours: I'm often in and available on short notice -- come by, send email, call, or make an appointment (office CSE542, x5-3798)
• TAs Scott Shawcroft (tannewt@cs or scotts4@u), Eriel Thomas (erielt@cs or erielt@u), Michael Ratanapintha  (michaelr@cs or mikerata@u)
• Office hours: TBD or by appointment (office TBA)
• Staff email list Cse403-ta@cs.washington.edu (for the instructor and all of the TAs)
  
• Mailing list cse403a_wi09@u.washington.edu
• Membership will be automatically managed based on official class lists
• Postings from other than your .u email account may be delayed until approved for posting
• Class wiki
• Readings
• The readings for the course are listed in the syllabus below.
• I will often try to pair "classic" readings with "newer" readings -- both provide value and perspective.
  
• Access to many of the readings is through DOI's (digital object identifiers), most commonly into the ACM and IEEE Digital Libraries, which usually will require you to be logged in from a UW IP address for licensing reasons.  Some of the readings may be available elsewhere on the Internet.
  
• There is no text book for the course.  Here are some books that have been recommended or required in 403 or similar courses elsewhere.
• Examinations will be held on Wednesday February 18 and on Tuesday March 17 (the scheduled day for the final). 
  
• Both examinations will consist entirely of questions that will require you to bring together information from the lectures, from the readings (not including optional ones), and (to a much lesser degree) from your projects.  (Previous instances of 403, including some of mine, have often ignored the readings or had a regular requirement to write brief synopses of the readings; I have heard complaints about both approaches. This is another approach that is worth trying.)
  
• They are open-book and open-note, but closed-any-other-sentient-being; all material not produced directly by you must be appropriately cited.
  
• To allow you to type the answers (which allows me to read the answers more easily), these exams will be handed out at 2:30PM in the classroom on the two examination days.  You may work on the exams anywhere you wish.
  
• They are due, electronically (details to be announced), four hours later (at 6:30PM on the same day).
• I will need significant notice in advance if either of these four hour periods are infeasible for you.
  
• Lectures 
• Notes will generally be linked to the date in the calendar below after the lecture.
• Week 1 will generally introduce software engineering and give a crash course on the software lifecycle: requirements, design, testing, etc.
• The following weeks will generally cover the lifecycle phases in more detail, attempting to cover the important aspects before (or more realistically as) you need them for the associated  project milestones.
• Evaluation
• Exams: 15% each (30% total)
• Group project: 70% total
• "Final" SRS: 15%
• "Final" SDS: 10%
• Zero-feature release: 10%
• Beta release: 10%
• Final release: 15%
• Post-mortem (one per team member): 5%
• Miscellaneous: 5%
• In general, members of each group will receive the same grade (except for the individual post-mortem), although in some clear-cut cases individual grades may vary from the overall group grade.
  
• Project information
  
• Academic misconduct is a very serious offense and will be dealt with through the departmental, college and university processes. Copying others' work, including from this or previous quarters or from publicly available sources without attribution, is considered cheating.  If in doubt about what might constitute cheating, send the instructor email describing the situation. For more details see the CSE Academic Misconduct web page.