Boring standard stuff

CSE503 will cover a set of topics central to software engineering including formal requirements and specifications, design, testing and analysis, software quality, evolution, reverse engineering, and reuse, etc. The intention is to learn about various approaches to improving software and software development practices, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches. As part and parcel of this, I will try to convey my views of the directions that I expect software engineering practice and software engineering research to take over the next decade.

The course work consists of three basic parts:

1. Assignments, which account for 50% of the grade. I expect to give roughly five assignments over the quarter. Optionally, you may work in pairs on the assignments, and you can make this decision differently from assignment to assignment.

2. A project, which accounts for 30% of the grade. These may also be done in pairs. Each project will be negotiated with me individually during the first half of the quarter. I will make some suggestions about possible projects, but it would be great if you developed some on your own. (The possibility of some of these projects continuing and becoming quals projects is quite reasonable.) The project will have both a written (10-20 pages) and an oral presentation (the length will depend on how many projects we end up having). The project paper is due Friday May 24th, and the project presentations will probably be held the last two class sessions (May 29th and 31st).

3. A written final, which accounts for 20% of the grade. (This cannot be done in pairs.) This will be held at the regularly scheduled time for the final (which I believe is Monday June 3 from 8:30AM-10:20AM).

Note that there is no large development project. I expect that you have had some experience in developing group projects, even if only for university courses. At a minimum, if you don't have prior experience, skim virtually any software engineering text; one that I recommend slightly above the others is Fundamentals of Software Engineering by Ghezzi, Jazayeri and Mandrioli.

Kingsum Chow (kingsum@cs.washington.edu) is our TA. I will announce office hours soon. In any case, feel free to make appointments to see me outside office hours using email, voice mail or stopping by. My email addresses is notkin@cs.washington.edu, my office is Sieg 414, respectively, my phone number is 685-3798.