CSE 8317 (Fall, 2008): Homework Assignments
Assignment #A: Background/Literature Research
Assignment#A-part 1: Literature Research
Use the online
resources
for software engineering/quality literature
as your guide,
search (I suspect that the majority will be "search" online,
see my recommendations on this below)
some journals/magazines/proceedings/online sources to find
some articles on software reliability/safety
and related defect/risk/quality analysis,
and do the following:
-
Browse through at least 3 recent (see below)
periodical/proceeding issues
where some of the relevant papers in the subject
area appear.
-
List related papers for each issue
by the following topic areas:
- defect analysis and risk analysis related to software quality
- software reliability engineering
- software safety engineering
-
Be sure to glance through the abstracts because some titles may not be
informative enough for your to make the above categorization.
-
If you choose to do a individual study presentation from these papers,
please let me know of your desired candidate paper and presentation date.
-
In addition, if you plan to do a "literature survey" type of project,
indicate which paper(s) will be among your candidate papers.
Some specifics about your literature sources:
-
When I say "recent", it means
no more than 10 years old under most circumstances,
but typically within the last 5 years.
-
You may use online sources if you prefer,
but try to stay with online version of "published" literature only.
(I.e., not just some personal opinion posted by individual web users.)
One good source for such online publications/subscriptions is the SMU
Library "Online Resources" link, which you can all access using your
SMU ID card (Library barcode on back).
-
When you use online sources,
make sure you have access to at least the paper abstracts for this assignment,
and the full papers for future ones.
-
Try to use different publications to achieve better diversity.
I.e., Do not limit yourself to three issues of the same journal.
-
You may want to use some of the more recent papers
from our textbooks and online papers/references as index
into selected periodical/proceedings issues.
However, this may work better for older issues instead of newer ones.
Assignment#A-part 2: Background Research on Analysis Techniques
Use Tian/SQE Part IV chapters and related references as your guide,
find an article or a book to help you understand better some of the
following topics:
-
Causal analysis for individual defects and groups of defects,
and related analysis techniques and processes.
A good example is Ishikawa's "fishbone" diagram.
-
Overall statistical defect analysis,
including trend analysis (e.g., Lyu/HSRE Ch. 10),
distribution analysis (lots of papers on this),
general defect models.
-
Defect classification and analysis
(e.g., read one of the original ODC papers referenced
in Tian/SQE Ch.20, Ma/Tian web-ODC paper, or Lyu/HSRE Ch.9,
or recent development/applications
of ODC such as Lutz/Mikulski paper in our
online list).
-
Risk identification techniques, particularly newer ones such as
PCA/DA, NN, OSR, TBM
(e.g., read one of the references cited in Tian/SQE Ch.21, or Lyu/HSRE Ch.17),
and their application in software quality assessment/prediction.
Write a short summary of the paper/chapter,
and discuss its relevance to our class and
to your work (total length not to exceed 2 pages).
If you find the paper/chapter interesting and useful,
you might want to prepare a presentation as your individual study
presentation for the class on 8/23/08.
In that case, please let me know before class time (the earlier, the better).
Due Date for hw#A: 8/23/08
Assignments #R and #S
You might want to tie your hw#R and/or hw#S to your course project.
In that case, if you choose an SRE-related project, you might want to
do hw#R first; otherwise, you might want to do hw#S first.
1st due date: 9/6/08 for one of (hw#R or hw#S)
2nd due date: 9/20/08 for the other
Assignment #R: Paper Summary/Critique
Select one paper about software reliability from homework #1
or from other sources
(you might want to do some additional literature research for this assignment,
based on what we have covered up to this point in class)
and write a short summary, analysis, and critique.
You summary/analysis/critique should be around 3 or 4 double-spaced
pages of text.
Pay special attention to its relevance to CSE 8317 and to your work.
Some specifics about this assignment are listed below:
-
The summary should be your own summary, based on your understanding of the
paper, not the authors' summary/abstract.
-
The analysis and critique is an important part of your essay
(at least as important as your summary itself),
which may include, among other things,
an analysis based on what we covered in class on related topics,
your subjective assessment of the paper,
what you would do differently,
practical impact of the reported work,
possible followup research and/or applications of the reported work.
It is desirable if you can make it relevant to what you are doing at work.
-
Give full citation details (for example references, see Tian/SQE),
and provide a copy of the original abstract.
If the paper was not publicly available
(e.g., internal report) or hard to track down
(e.g., regional or industry specific conferences),
you need to include a copy of the paper(s) with your homework submission.
Due Date for hw#R: 9/6/08 or 9/20/08 (See above)
Assignment #S: Paper Summary/Critique
Repeat assignment #R for a software safety related paper.
Due Date for hw#S: 9/6/08 or 9/20/08 (See above)
Assignment #4: Preparing for the Final Quiz
In preparation for the final quiz,
as well as to review and summarize the course material for your own learning,
I suggest the following questions:
- Sample final quiz to be distributed in class on 9/20/08.
- Problems from Tian/SQE book:
2.4, 15.1, 15.3, 15.4, 15.6, 15.7,
16.1, 16.2, 16.7, 16.8 (add "fishbone"-diagram here),
16.9, 18.5, 20.1, 20.3, 20.4, 20.5,
20.6, 21.2, 21.7, 21.9, 22.1-6 (all).
- Problems from Lyu/HSRE book:
Chapters 1&6 problems.
- Reivew of class slides.
Due Date for hw#4: (None, but see note below.)
Nothing need to be turned in for this homework.
However, for your own benefit, you should try to finished it before
our last class on 10/6/08 (10/20/08?),
when some of these problems will be briefly
discussed/reviewed as part of the review for the final quiz.
Alternatively, you can treat hw#4 as an on-going self-evaluation
assignment, and finish the questions as we go along throughout the
semester when relevant topics are discussed in class.
Individual Study Presentation
Notice: You may choose either of the above papers for hw#2 and hw#3
or the background article/chapter for hw#1
for your full individual study presentation.
Prepared by Jeff Tian
(tian@engr.smu.edu).
Posted: Aug. 8, 2008. Last update: Sept. 4, 2008.