CSE 8317 (Spring, 2017): Homework Assignments
Assignment #L: 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 notes below)
some journals/magazines/proceedings 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.
-
Classify and list related papers for each issue by the following topic areas:
- defect analysis and risk analysis related to software quality
and dependability
- 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 a specific paper fits more than one categories,
it may appear in all relevant lists.
However, try to minimize such multi-category listings
by focusing on the primary category only if there is one.
-
For sample reference listing, refer to either of our textbooks.
-
If you plan 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.
-
Try to use different publications to achieve better diversity.
I.e., Do not limit yourself to three issues of the same journal.
-
Try to find at least one paper in each category.
-
You may want to use some of the more recent papers/books/documents and their
references as index
into selected periodical/proceedings issues.
Notes about online literature research
If you prefer to do a online literature research,
the best place to start is the online resources in the
SMU library that you all should have assess to.
Your SMU ID card, Library barcode on the back, is required
for doing this.
You may also use your personal or your companies online
subscriptions.
You can browse through online copies of published
literature in a similar way as you do traditional
literature research as described above.
If you are using some other online sources,
search with Google or other search engines,
or other data bases, such as Web of Science,
Google Scholar, etc.,
you should satisfy all the above requirements
except for the following:
-
Instead of browsing 3 physical journal/proceedings issue,
you may research on individual papers in each of the
three categories defined above, and try to find at least 5
papers in each category.
-
Try to stay with online version of "published" literature only.
(I.e., not just some personal opinion, blog, book reports, documents
for a graduate/undergraduate class, etc.,
posted by individual web users.)
-
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.
What to turn in:
A list of papers, with full reference/citation information,
classified by the following topic areas:
- defect analysis and risk analysis related to software quality
and dependability
- software reliability engineering
- software safety engineering
Again, the list from online literature research should contain
at least 5 papers per category; while the one from browsing
3 printed issues must have at least 1 paper per category.
Due date for hw#L: 2/3/2015.
Assignment #A: Analysis Techniques
(Defect Analysis and Risk Identification)
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 about 3-5 pages).
If you find the paper/chapter interesting and useful,
you might want to prepare a presentation as your individual study
presentation.
In that case, please let me know when you'd like to do the
presentation (the earlier, the better).
Due date for hw#A: 2/15/2017.
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 to do an SRE-related project,
you might want to do hw#R first;
otherwise, you might want to do hw#S first.
1st due date for one of (hw#R or hw#S): 3/1/2017
2nd due date for the other: 3/29/2017
Assignment #R: Paper Summary/Critique
Select one paper about SRE
(either from homework #1 or based on additional literature research)
and write a short summary, analysis, and critique.
You summary/analysis/critique should be 3-5 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 selected paper should be a published one
(see hw#A literature research description above),
and NOT a general background or survey paper.
-
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
(it's technical merit, primarily, but people often make
comments about the organization/presentation as well),
what you would do differently,
practical impact of the reported work,
possible followup research and/or applications of the reported work.
-
Discuss its relevance to what you are doing at work.
-
Give full citation details
(for example reference listing, see either of our textbooks),
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: (See above)
Assignment #S: Paper Summary/Critique
Repeat assignment #R for a software safety related paper.
Due Date for hw#S: (See above)
Individual Study Presentation
Notice: You may choose one of the above papers
for your full individual study presentation.
Prepared by Jeff Tian
(tian@engr.smu.edu).
Posted: Jan. 23, 2017.
Last update: Jan. 23, 2017.