Syllabus for SSE 659

Design Quality and Maintenance

Fall Semester 2011 (11F)

Early draft; changes are likely.

Textbooks and Supplies:

Texts (including web sites):

• Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (1st ed.) by Martin Fowler, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-48567-2 (1999) Check Out This Text at Amazon.com (Required)
• (There may be an additional text to be announced later.)

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Software (including web sites):

• Note that this course is intended to be OS neutral.
• An Internet ftp client of your choice.  Core FTP LE is free and works well http://www.coreftp.com/ .  (Required, but your choice)

Other Useful Resources (including web sites):

• TBD.

Catalog Description (Course Purpose):

Software maintenance and the improvement of the design of existing code. Incremental development, adding new features with support from refactoring. Design quality evaluation and design quality improvement. Test-first development.

Course Objectives:

Breadth and Depth in Defining, Analyzing, and Solving Complex Problems:

• After successfully completing this course, you should be able to demonstrate a basic capability to apply refactoring techniques to solve complex problems.

Communicate Technical Aspects of the Solution for Complex Software Engineering Problems to a Technical Audience:

• After successfully completing this course, you should be able to demonstrate a basic ability to communicate regarding the application of refactoring techniques to a technical audience.

Prerequisites:

SSE 550 Object-Oriented Design I or permission of the program director based on you documented capability to develop object oriented software.

Class Location:

• This Online Learning course takes place asynchronously in Cyberspace; i.e., on the Internet.

Grading:

More information about grading is contained in the General Project Rubric.

This course will also use an additional grading rubric.

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Assignments:

• Purpose of projects:
  • Use the projects to develop your capabilities, and
  • Use the projects to demonstrate your capabilities.
• Deliverables for all projects:
  • Your report should be a single, standalone document in .pdf, .html or .doc format.
  • The target audience for your report is the set of practicing software engineers who have not studied refactoring.
  • Your report should be organized in such a way as to make the topics that you want credit for covering easy to find, and demonstrate your capabilities clearly and convincingly. Everything you want considered for credit, including code and tests (including test results), should be included in the report.
  • Each project can be a single, integrated project that tries to actually do something, or a collection of exercises that demonstrate your capabilities but don't accomplish anything else, or any combination of these two alternatives that you find convenient.
  • You may include other material outside of the report, if you wish, but this material may or may not be considered in evaluating your work.
  • For each capability that you demonstrate within a report or major section of that report, you may present only the final result of your work; you need not demonstrate every step in the development of that result.
• Some suggestions for doing a project are contained in the One Way to Do a Project page.
• Project 1 (solo):
  • Find some code in your selected language (Java, C#, or C++) that you can refactor for this project. (Hint: the source code for Junit, Nunit, or CppUnit would not be an appropriate choice. Otherwise, open source software may be a good source of code to refactor.)
  • Develop and demonstrate your capabilities in the topics covered in Chapters 3 through 7 of Fowler.
  • TBD.
• Project 2 (solo):
  • Find some code in your selected language (Java, C#, or C++) that you can refactor for this project. (Hint: the source code for Junit, Nunit, or CppUnit would not be an appropriate choice. Otherwise, open source software may be a good source of code to refactor.)
  • Develop and demonstrate your capabilities in the topics covered in Chapters 3 through 12 of Fowler.
  • Use an automated tool such as Junit, NUnit, Unit++,  CppUnit, or another (ask me first, please) to implement your test-first testing as part of refactoring.
    
• Project 3 (team only):
  • Step 1. Read the Wikipedia article on software maintenance https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Software_maintenance . Complete this step before moving on.
  • Read something else about software maintenance. Briefly report on what you read in your project report.
  • Each team member shall provide another team member with software to maintain, and some information about the required maintenance. This software shall be new to the person who receives it, and no two team members shall maintain the same software. Person A provides some software and maintenance requirements to person B (A -> B); Person B provides some software and maintenance requirements to person A (B -> A).
  • If you have a three person team (which requires my prior approval), then A -> B, B -> C, and C -> A.
  • Perform the required maintenance.
  • Document (Part 1) the software and maintenance requirements that you provided to a teammate, and (Part 2) the maintenance you performed on the software you received from a teammate. These are the two parts of your Project 3 report.
    
  • Each person will have their own individual report; there will be no group team report.
  • Your report will be graded based on the Course Objectives. For Part 1, this will mean how well the software and maintenance requirements you provided to a teammate support that teammate's development and documentation of software maintenance capabilities. For Part 2, this will mean how well your work on the software you received, based on maintenance requirements you received, supports the development and documentation of your maintenance skills. Put some thought into what software and maintenance requirements you provide to a teammate, and what you do with the software and maintenance requirements you receive.
    
  • This project is not focussed on refactoring. Some refactoring may be needed, but it will get you little or no credit. See the assigned readings (starting with the Wikipedia article) for other (than refactoring) topics in maintenance, and focus on some of those.
  • By the nature of this assignment, it must be a team project. You must maintain someone else's code. As you can do this only in a language you know, we will have to arrange the teams so that everyone has someone(s) else to get code from, and give code to.
  • Doubtless there will be questions and issues; please bring them up via the course listserv.
    
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Additional Information:

• Asynchronous Learning Nets (ALNs)
  • Self Study: You study the texts and any other course study material on your own.
  • Collaborative Projects: After your self-study, you collaborate (via the Internet [email, ftp]) with your partner(s) to produce a team product. Your collaborative work is substantial, asynchronous, and rapid.
  • This course is a distance learning course. Please read this Distance Learning web page regarding distance learning in this course and this program.

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• What Do I Do?

• Subscribe to the course email listserv and be able to access our FTP server; your professor can tell you how to do this.
• Study the assigned material.
• Write and read email messages about ideas, problems and solutions to do with the assigned study material.
• Do the assigned exercises.
• Write and read email messages (to/from the listserv) about ideas, problems and solutions to do with the assigned homework.
• Review the exercises done by other people, as assigned by the professor.

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Changes to this Syllabus:

There will be changes to this syllabus, so check back frequently, and don't forget to hit "Reload" or "Refresh".

Schedule of Events and Assignments:

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List of all courses.

Contact Information

• My Name: Dr. Paul E. MacNeil
• My E-mail: macneil_pe@mercer.edu .
• My Office Phone: 478 301-2185
• My FAX: 478 301-2732
• US Mail:
   
  • Dr. Paul E. MacNeil
  • School of Engineering
  • Mercer University
  • 1400 Coleman Ave.
  • Macon, GA 31207

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Important Additional Information:
Students requiring accommodations for a disability should inform the instructor at the close of the first class meeting or as soon as possible.  If you are not registered with Disability Services, the instructor will refer you to the Disability Support Services office for consultation regarding documentation of your disability and eligibility for accommodations under the ADA/504.  In order to receive accommodations, eligible students must provide each instructor with a “Faculty Accommodation Form” from Disability Services.  Students must return the completed and signed form to the Disability Services Coordinator on the 3rd floor of the Connell Student Center.  Students with a documented disability who do not wish to use academic accommodations are also strongly encouraged to register with Disability Services and complete a Faculty Accommodation Form each semester.  For further information, please contact Carole Burrowbridge, Disability Services Coordinator, at 301-2778 or visit the web site at http://www.mercer.edu/stu_support/swd.htm

Accreditation: Mercer University is accredited by SACS.