Software Engineering-1 (CS504) Assignment # 5 Deadline Date = 31-01-2011

Software Engineering-1 (CS504)

Assignment # 5

  Total marks = 20

                                                               Deadline Date = 31-01-2011

Please carefully read the following instructions before attempting the assignment.

Rules for Marking

It should be clear that your assignment would not get any credit if:

• The assignment is submitted after due date.
• The submitted assignment does not open or file is corrupt.
• The assignment is copied. Note that strict action would be taken if the submitted assignment is copied from any other student. Both students will be punished severely.

You are supposed to submit your assignment in .doc format. Any other formats like scan images, PDF, Zip, rar, bmp, docx etc will not be accepted

You are advised to upload your assignment at least two days before Due date. This assignment file comprises of four (4) pages. Questions are there on page no. 4

Important Note: 

Assignment comprises of 20 Marks. Note that no assignment will be accepted after due date via email in any case (whether it is the case of load shedding or emergency electric failure or internet malfunctioning etc.). Hence, refrain from uploading assignment in the last hour of the deadline, and try to upload Solutions at least 02 days before the deadline to avoid inconvenience later on.

For any query please contact: CS504@vu.edu.pk

Introduction:

In this assignment we will study the factors effecting software architecture. Software architecture is defined by SEI [1] as follows:

“Software architecture of a program or computing system is the structure of structures of the system, which comprise software elements, the externally visible properties of those elements, and the relationship among them”

It is very important to be careful while building architecture of any software because it ensures that any system development gets on track.

Structure:

The assignment comprises of an article titled “Core Issues Affecting Software Architecture in Enterprise Projects” by Halûk Gümüşkaya [2]. Students are recommended to carefully read the article at least three (3) times to answer the questions given in this assignment. [It is attached with this assignment file.]

Each question will involve consulting the books and literature, which means, students will not rely on this article only.

How to read the article:

Please read the article carefully at least twice or thrice. To discuss any query regarding the article, please use the email address (cs504@vu.edu.pk). For each technical concept discussed in the article, try to explore it further from books or internet to clear your concepts and to answer the questions better.

________________________________________________________________________

[1] Len Bass, Paul Clements, and Rick Kazman, “Software architecture in practice”, second edition (Boston, MS: Addison-Wesley, 2003.

[2] Halûk Gümüşkaya, “Core Issues Affecting Software Architecture in Enterprise Projects”, World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology 9 2005.
How to solve:

Students will have to answer the questions in precise manner with “to the point” approach. Proper references will have to be provided where necessary. It is expected that there will be no grammatical and spelling mistakes in the solution. You may search / study the relevant material, to answer the questions, from different books and internet, but the answers will be provided in student’s own word. For any sentence taken from some other source, provide the complete reference of that source (like we have given the reference for SEI definition at page 2 of this assignment.)

Assignment Submission Procedure:

Students may follow the following procedure to solve the assignment:

1)     Four to five days may be scheduled to read the article attached. Remaining days may be used to solve the assignment.

2)     Don’t post any queries regarding the Assignment on MDB’s however you can use email facility to ask any query regarding any difficulty in article.

3)     Deadline is (31-01-2011), so students will have 10 to 11 days to submit the assignment.

Question No. 1

Find four or five definitions of software architecture in books, or on websites. See if you can distill their essential differences and their essential similarities. What do you like and dislike about each one.

Question No. 2

Author, in the article, highlights the Standish Group’s “Chaos Report” of 1994 which suggested that only 16.2% of software projects were completed on-time and on budget. However the figure was increased to 29% in 2004. Although the increase in success rate was significant but still dismal when compared with traditional engineering deplanes.

Discuss at least Two factors (among those discussed in article) that you think, can help further to bridge the gap (i.e. to increase the success rate).

Question No. 3

For the definition taken from reference no. 4 in the article:

“The structure or structures of the system, which comprise software components, the externally visible properties of those components, and the relationships among them”

Author claims that this definition focuses only on the internal aspects of a system. Can you device a precise definition of your own that covers all/maximum aspects and characteristics of software architecture.