Question:
PLEASE USE HEADINGS AND PROVIDE A STRONG INTRODUCTION AND CONCLUSION. PROPER CITATIONS AND REFERENCES A MUST
STRUCTURED DESIGN AND RELIABILITY ENGINEERING
Assignment Overview
Modularity is a characteristic of good design. In modular design, the components have definite inputs and outputs, and each component has a clearly stated purpose. In decomposition, we consider the top level to be the most abstract, and components are arranged in level or abstraction or hierarchy. By combining modular components into several levels of abstraction, the system can be observed in different views. The high level components give the opportunity to see the system solution as a whole, hiding lower level details. In functional decomposition, the view shows the major functions the system performs. In object-oriented design, the view illustrates the abstract types and related objects without looking at every instance of the object.
With the advances in modeling techniques, modularity can be performed using different designs in a variety of different ways. For example, the user interface could be designed with use cases (object orientation) and prototyping, and the security design could be modeled using state-transition diagrams. For most projects, the design is created in collaboration with other business analysts and developers. One of the major problems with collaboration is addressing differences in system perception and experiences. To avoid some of these problems, a groupware tool may be utilized. Otherwise, the design will be subject to various walkthroughs and meetings. Company culture, lack of specialization, and user preferences may also cause communication gaps and issues in the design process.
Required Readings
For Module 3, read Conger's Chapter 8 pages 279 to 310.
Conger, S. (2008). The New Software Engineer. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company [Global Text]. Retrieved from http://dl.dropbox.com/u/31779972/The%20New%20Software%20Engineering.pdf
Pan, J. (1999). Software reliability. Retrieved from http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/des_s99/sw_reliability/
Sommerville, I. (2011). Software Engineering. 9th ed. Boston, Massachusetts: Adison-Wesley. [Chapter 13- Depending Engineering PPT]
Sommerville, I. (2011). Software Engineering. 9th ed. Boston, Massachusetts: Adison-Wesley. [Chapter 26: Process Improvement PPT]
Case Assignment
After reading the course materials, please write a 3- to 4-page paper answering the following.
Explain how the characteristics of good design contribute to the product quality. For example how do coupling, cohesion, and modularity affect reliability of systems?
Assignment Expectations
Length: Minimum 3-4 pages excluding cover page and references (since a page is about 300 words, this is approximately 900 - 1,200 words).
Your assignment will be evaluated based on the Rubric.