Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences

Lecturers :

Stella George (Room LB208) comqsjg 01707 284375

Ben Potter (Room LB206) comqbp 01707 284345

Mick Wood (Room LB206) - course leader comqmw 01707 284308

Timetable : You are timetabled for one lecture (Thursday at 14:00) + one tutorial per week. You should spend, on average, about 4 hours per week of extra time on this course, although you may find that this is exceeded during periods when assessed practical work is being undertaken.

This course builds on your experience of modelling problems and implementing programs to solve them which you acquired in earlier courses. So far, your experience may be limited to rather small problems. SDD is about what happens when you apply the techniques you learnt in those courses (plus some new ones) to bigger programs or complete systems.

A number of new factors need to be considered, such as:

1. the prooblems will generally be bigger than brain-sized - that means you have to write things down and be disciplined about documentation, otherwise you'll forget something important, or otherwise get into a mess, and...
   

2. you will need to work in a team to stand any chance of getting the job done in a reasonable timescale. This brings benefits and additional problems.
   

The only way to get a feel for how to develop a system is to get on and do it. So, this is a practical course, but we mustn't get so involved with the practice that we neglect to reflect more generally. How good are the techniques we are using? Do they match up to the claims made for them? How do we fit them together? As you apply the theory you may well want to make your own criticisms of it and contribute to it.

There will be two practical projects on the course this year, one in each of the first two terms. Both projects will involve group work and will involve you building a system which you will demonstrate to us:

1. first term: Supermarket Simulation. This project is focused on program design, implementation and integration activities. We will use Ada as the implementation language, so the project is effectively an exercise using the skills from CS1 Programming, but considerably scaled up. Demonstration in the last week of this term.
   

2. second term: Willowbank Sports Club. This is a small database application typical of resource allocation or reservation systems. We will use it to explore how various techniques fit together in the development of a system, and to investigate the role of prototyping in system development. We will use Borland Delphi as the implementation tool.
   

The demonstration for this will take place in the second week of the third term, but you should really get most of the work out of the way by Easter.

The rest of the third term will be used for revision and preparation for the Exam, including preparatory tutorials.

To pass the Course, you must pass the Exam and pass Overall. The breakdown of coursework and exam marks is:

Examination 50%

Coursework 50%, made up of:

Supermarket Simulation 25%

Willowbank 25%

The format of the exam will be the same as this year, based around a seen case study which will be given out after Easter.

For both projects, you will work in Project Teams or groups, although the size, composition and general style of these will be different for the two projects. When it comes to working in groups, please note that:

1. The members of your group must be able to meet regularly, and attend the same tutorial.

2. Once you have formed a group, we expect you to stick with it, except in exceptional circumstances. But if your group shows signs of falling apart, you MUST let us know so that we can help you to take remedial action.
   

3. Stella is prepared to give advice/help on group problems; individuals or groups can make appointments to see her (sign up on the sheet outside her office).
   

4. Please inform us promptly of any individual circumstances which might affect your ability to contribute to your group.
   

5. The majority of the tutorials for SDD are student driven. Each (individual or) group works on the projects, under our direction. You will be given tasks and deadlines to meet. How you organise the work within a group is up to you, as long as you stay on schedule, but for some projects we may expect you to keep a record of your group's activities, time spent, etc.
   

6. In our experience of running this and similar courses, students who make a conscientious attempt to keep up with the work on projects during the year, and participate fully in tutorial activities, usually pass the examination.
   

7. In general, we expect to give the same group coursework mark to all members of a group, unless it is obvious from oral examination at the practical demos that a group has been carrying one or more passengers. We may, however, use peer assessment of one or both projects to award some proportion of the marks in a fair manner.
   

Communications

Point Netscape (or other browser) at......

the SDD WWW site at http://www.cs.herts.ac.uk/~cs2_sdd

also via any of the SDD team's home pages. We will use this to make copies of course materials available (most of these will normally be distributed at lectures).

Other information (announcements, corrections, etc.) will be made available via the SDD Newsgroup herts.cs.cs2.sdd

In general, we do not intend to email SDD students directly. You will also be able to use the Newsgroup for (responsible and mature!) discussion about the course material and activities. Please use email, however, for messages which are not of general interest (e.g. telling the course leader who is in your Supermarket group).

There is no recommended single text book for this course, mainly because SDD covers such a wide range of material. We will recommend suitable reading material as the course progresses; in particular, we will distribute copies of relevant papers on system development (naturally we reserve the right to charge for these!). The following books are among the many that are worth looking at (copies in the library):

Software Engineering Addison Wesley 4th edition 1992 (£21.95)

Ian Sommerville

Broad if not very deep; this is useful as an introductory reference book on a wide range of topics, and includes good suggestions for further reading.

Software Development - Fashioning the Baroque

Darrel Ince Oxford University Press 1988 (£9.95)

A series of very readable and interesting essays on software development.

Evolutionary Systems Development

John Crinnion Pitman 1991 (£19.99)

This is easy to read and has a good coverage of basic techniques of ëstructuredí analysis (data flow, data dictionary, entity modelling, entity life histories), plus some sensible stuff on prototyping.

A Book of Object-Oriented Knowledge

B Henderson-Sellers Prentice-Hall 1992 (£24.95)

There are loads of books on OO matters. This one is a broad ranging and readable account of OO concepts, from analysis through to programming languages.

The Mythical Man Month

Fred P Brooks Addison-Wesley 1978/1995 (£19.95)

A collection of essays about project management. A classic work on the practicalities of computing projects. Now reprinted with some additional material (including the famous 'No Silver Bullet' paper).

Strategies for Software Engineering - The Management of Risk and Quality

Martyn Ould Wiley 1990 (£19.50)

About the process of systems development and how to manage it Very readable with lots of anecdotes from real projects.

Graphical User Interface Design and Evaluation

David Redmond-Pyle & Alan Moore Prentice-Hall 1995

Describes their GUIDE method for develpment of systems with event-driven interfaces. Has had some effect on our approach to Willowbank.

The Elements of Friendly Software Design

Paul Heckel Sybex 1991 (2nd ed) £20.95

Very highly-rated second edition of classic work by a pioneer in this field - one of the brains behind Hypercard. Recommended easy reading.

Human-Computer Interaction Prentice Hall 1993

A Dix, J Finlay, G Abowd, R Beale

Good general and fairly up-to-date work on principles and practice of HCI design.

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