CS 8317 (Fall, 2020): Homework Assignments

Prof. Jeff Tian (tian@engr.smu.edu)

Assignment #1/L: Literature Research

Due date: 9/8/2020

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 (as for risk, examine quality-related risk only, not other risks) measurement/analysis/improvement, and do the following:

Some specifics about your literature sources:

Notes about online literature research

If you prefer to do a online literature research, as I expect most of you will do, the best place to start is the online resources in the SMU library that you all have assess to. You may also use your personal (such as membership in ACM, IEEE, etc.) or your company's 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:

What to turn in:

  • A list of papers, with full reference/citation information, classified according to the following topic areas:
    1. A: defect/risk Analysis
    2. R: software Reliability engineering
    3. S: 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 3 paper per category.

    Assignment #2/A: Analysis Techniques (Defect Analysis and Risk Identification)

    Due date: 9/15/2018

    Use Tian/SQE Part IV chapters (or the ODC paper in Lyu/HSRE and the risk analysis paper on Canvas) and related references as your guide, find an article or a book (containing some relevant chapters) to help you understand better some of the following topics:

    Your source document may be a research paper discussing some new defect/risk analysis techniques and/or applications, a survey or information/summary/comparison article covering existing knowledge about the subject, or a book chapter (I don't expect you to read an entire book for this assignment) about the topic. However, it should not be one of the chapters or papers we have covered in class already.

    After studying your source document above, write a short summary of the paper/chapter, AND discuss the following (your critique):

    In addition, the summary should be your own summary, based on your understanding of the paper, not the authors' summary/abstract. The total length should be about 3-5 pages, with a proper balance between the summary and the critique parts.

    If you find the paper/chapter interesting and useful, you might want to prepare a presentation as your individual paper presentation (IPP). In that case, please let me know, via e-mail, when you'd like to do the presentation (the earlier, the better), and reserve your presentation slot (see the available slots and corresponding topics in individual paper presentation schedule).

    Assignment #3/R: Paper Summary/Critique

    Due date: 9/29/2020

    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 CS 8317 and to your work/future-career. Some specifics about this assignment are listed below:

    Assignment #4/S: Paper Summary/Critique

    Due date: 10/13/2020

    Repeat assignment #3/R for a software safety related paper.

    Individual Paper Presentation

    Notice: You may choose one of the above papers for your individual paper presentation. Try to reserve your presentation slot ASAP via e-mail. See the available slots and corresponding topics in individual paper presentation schedule.


    Prepared by Jeff Tian (tian@engr.smu.edu).
    Posted: Aug. 25, 2020. Last update: Aug. 25, 2020.

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