csc444f'06lecture 11 csc444 software engineering prof. david a. penny lectures will start at...

CSC444F'06 Lecture 1 1

CSC444Software Engineering

Prof. David A. PennyLectures Will start at 7:10 pmBreak at 8:00 pm, Resume at 8:10 pmEnd at 9:00 pm (or thereabouts!)

Please purchase a book for $40 next week.

Course Website:http://ccnet.utoronto.ca/20069/csc444h1f

http://ccnet.utoronto.ca/20069/csc444h1f


Professional Practices

• This course teaches you professional software development practices not consistently taught anywhere else.– Deals mostly with process, very little with specs/designs/coding.

– If you have the aptitude and inclination of becoming a professional software engineer you will find the course fascinating.

• Otherwise I guarantee you will be bored!

• Applying these practices will help you avoid– Missed dates

– Poor quality software

– Badly-designed features

– Poor user documentation

– Poor architecture and architectural documentation

– Dysfunctional professional relationships between “The Business Side” and Software Development

• When software is built in a professional fashion in industry, this is how it is consistently done.


About Prof. Penny

• Graduated B.Sc. in CS UofT 8T5, Ph.D 9T3– OOT IDE, Polyx, MiniTunis, CE, ...

• IBM Labs 1992 – 1994– C++ IDE for AIX

• Algorithmics 1994 – 1999– VP Software Development– RiskWatch > $500M in revenues to-date

• Consultant 1999 – 2003– Software management consulting (~10 engagements)

• UofT CS 2000 – 2003– Associate Professor

• Electronics Workbench 2003 – 2005– VP R&D – Acquired by National Instruments– MultiSim/UltiBoard/UltiRoute (8MLOC)

• Ceryx 2005 – present– CIO– Provisioning system


Lectures

• I wrote a manuscript for you guys:– Professional Software Development, 2005.

– I will be following it closely

– Tentative Schedule

Lecture Date Topics Chapters

1 Sep 11 Top-10 Practices, Introduction to Planning 1,2

2 Sep 18 Release Planning Overview, Capacity Constraint 3,4

3 Sep 25 Quantitative Capacity Constraint, Sample RP 5,A,C

4 Oct 2 Stochastic Capacity Constraint, Sample SRP 6,B,C

Oct 9 Thanksgiving – no lecture

5 Oct 16 Releases, Versions 7,8

6 Oct 23 MIDTERM Source Control 9

7 Oct 30 Build, Testing 10

8 Nov 6 Defect & Feature Tracking 11,12

9 Nov 13 Process Control 13

10 Nov 20 Architectural Clarity 14

11 Nov 27 Business Aspects / Exam Review 15,16


Grades

• 2 Assignments – 15% each– A1: Self-Aware Programming (out Sep.25 due Oct.16)

– A2: Release Planning (out Oct.30 due Nov.20)

– Late Policy:• 15% absolute penalty if handed in <= 1 week late• Not accepted after that

• Midterm – 30%– Oct.31, 6-7pm

– Closed book (I want you to study!)

– all lectures and assigned reading up to and including Oct.16th

• Exam – 40%– Closed book (ditto)

– Covers all lectures, assignments, and assigned reading


Course Conduct

• Come to ALL the lectures and come prepared– You should have read the assigned textbook reading– You should have thought about it

• Take notes during lectures. Ask questions to clarify material you are not 100% clear on.

• Review the posted slides afterwards.

• Prepare for the midterm and the examinations by re-reading the text and the lecture notes. Practice writing the tests– I will post last year’s midterm and exam for your review purposes

• MAINLY: attend lectures or you will be toast!

• If you do all this it will be an easy course to get a high grade in.


Experience

• Need– Formal education in the computing sciences– Professional experience

• Build software that lots of people pay money to buy– Not just “are you paid”

• Make certain decisions for v1 of a product

• Live with your mistakes through v2, v3, v4, ...

• Make fewer mistakes next time around

• We try to fill the gap a bit– Lessons coming out of extensive professional experience

• Not all professionals agree on what constitute “basic professional practices”– Characteristic of an immature industry

– But can agree on the problems we are trying to solve

– One (informed) opinion will be presented here


Intended Audience

• Commercial software vendor environment– Not open source, internal IT, ASP, NASA, ...

• Who– Individual contributors, Technical leaders, First-line managers,

Directors, VP’s, CTO’s

• Next release– Not initial release

– “Green fields” is 80% inspiration, 20% process

– “Next Release” is 80% process

– Next release development is more important to businesses

• Initial release development– Innovation is clearly also important

– Innovation is less amenable to help from process

– Should set things up to be sustainable


New Product Versus Established One

• New product– 1 yr. to develop

– 3 coders, 1 tester, 1 documenter

– Cost = 1 x 5 x $100,000 = $500,000

• Established Product– 5 years later

– 20 coders, 10 testers/build, 5 documenters

– Cost to date = $10,000,000

– Ongoing cost = $3,500,000 / year

• Improve productivity by 10%– New product: save $50,000

– Established Product: save $1,000,000 to date, $350,000/year

• Next release development is more economically important.


Top-10 Essential Practices

• Crystallized for me whenever I enter into a new engagement.• If any of these are missing, I know I have something to fix.• These are all important• It will take more than this course to cover them all

• You will agree that all suggestions are sensible and will probably vow to carry them out– On your first job, you’ll focus on code and test and forget most of them

– You’ll be bitten in the ass

– You’ll re-commit to the ideas (if you’re good)

• Simple but hard– Trust me: make sure these things are done and everything will go ok

– Very hard to change behaviour

– Need to be dogged and determined and tricky


infrastructure

control

refinement

source code control

defect/feature tracking

reproduciblebuilds

automated regression

testing

release planning

feature specifications

architectural control

business planning

effort tracking

process control


1. Source Code Control

• Central repository– Everybody knows where to find what they are looking for

– Secure, backed-up storage

• Defines module architectural structure– hierarchy

• Complete change history– Can back up and find where problems are first introduced

• Multiple maintenance streams– Work on next release while maintaining previous releases

• Patches– Can go back and patch any release in the field

• Enables Team development• “Interface” to coordinate Dev and QA/Build• “Guard” against bad changes


2. Defect / Feature Tracking

• Keeps track of all defects found or new features desired– Won’t forget any

• Coordinates a workflow for writing / fixing them– Won’t skip steps

• Provides management visibility into progress

• Enables effective prioritization

• Enables metrics gathering


3. Reproducible Builds

• Check out of source control and one command to build the product

• Required for a consistent experience across all developers, QA/Build, customers

• Dev builds– For coding and testing

• Production builds– Includes creation of install image

– And creation of ISO-Image

– Should also be fully automated


4. Automated Regression Testing

• Scripts that run after every QA/Build dev build to test as much functionality as possible

• Critical to improving software quality

• Prevents errors with previously seen symptoms from recurring– A very common thing to happen

• Enables coders to change tricky bits with confidence

• Enables finding problems closer to their injection– Earlier you can find an issue the less costly it is to fix.

• Enables fixing last problems prior to shipping with confidence– Can release with fewer known defects– Can release on time


5. Release Planning• After the previous basics are in place this is the most important practice

– Will spend 1/3 of the course on this

• Determining– What goes into the next release– By when will it will be done– Using what resources

• Tracking that throughout the release• Adjusting as necessary

• Enables business side to do their jobs– Good relationships

• Enables quality– By maintaining the test/debug period

• Provides elbow room– To improve productivity


6. Feature Specifications

• Complicated features require them– Need to make this determination

• Needed to keep release plan on track– Better estimates if know what we are doing in more detail

• Enables a better end-user feature

• Eliminates unanticipated integration problems

• Best place to introduce reviews


7. Architectural Control

• Must maintain a clean architecture even in the face of– Many coders working on the code

– Frequent feature additions• That the software was not designed for initially

– Frequent defect corrections• By inexperienced coders who do not understand the architecture

• Architectural documentation

• Review of designs and code for conformance

• Chief Architect

• Automated architectural checking tools


8. Effort Tracking

• Need to know how much staff time is spent on– Each new feature

– Correcting defects

– Other

• Can improve estimation accuracy

• Can improve estimates of staff time available for next release

• Can monitor effectiveness of initiatives to free up coder time for more coding


9. Process Control

• Written process for the release cycle

• Gets everybody on the same page– Can train new staff

• Enables systematic definition / collection of metrics

• Can monitor process for compliance

• Can consider changes to the process from a stable baseline


10. Business Planning

• Development occurs within a business context

• If not understood and managed, will sink the project more surely than technical shortcomings

• Writing effective proposals

• Integrating into the budget cycle.


Summary – Top 10 practices

Do all these things, and you’re doing well.

infrastructure

control

refinement

source code control

defect/feature tracking

reproduciblebuilds

automated regression

testing

release planning

feature specifications

architectural control

business planning

effort tracking

process control

csc444f'06lecture 11 csc444 software engineering prof. david a. penny lectures will start at...

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