CS 8317 (Spring 2022): Homework Assignments
Hw#1/A: Analysis Techniques and Literature Research
Due date: 3/31/2022
Hw#1-Part I: 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
(as for risk, examine quality-related risk only, not other risks)
measurement/analysis/improvement,
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:
- A: defect/risk Analysis
(also including measurement and management/improvement)
related to software quality and dependability
- R: software Reliability engineering
- S: software Safety engineering
-
Be sure to glance through the abstracts because some titles may not be
informative enough (and sometimes even misleading)
for you 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.
-
Each item in your classified list is an individual paper or book
chapter, with full reference/citation information included.
For sample reference listing entries and required information,
refer to either of our textbooks,
or our online document for
additional books and papers.
In fact, this online list of
additional books and papers,
is itself a classified listing by document types and topics.
-
If you plan to do a individual study presentation from one of these papers,
please let me know of your desired candidate paper and presentation date.
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 several relevant papers per publication
(at least one, but normally a handful or so such papers).
If not, you'll have to simply discard the publication and find
another one.
-
Overall, you need to find at least three papers 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.
(I.e., use your citation chain.)
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:
-
Instead of browsing 3 physical journal/proceedings issue,
you may research on individual papers in each of the
three categories defined above, and find at least 5
papers in each category.
-
Stay with online version of "published" literature only.
(I.e., not just some personal opinion, blog, book review,
report/essay/document 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 study and/or individual paper presentation.
What to turn in:
A list of papers, with full reference/citation information,
classified according to the following topic areas:
- A: defect/risk Analysis
- R: software Reliability engineering
- 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 papers per category.
Hw#1-Part II: Essay about A Selected Analysis Technique
(Defect Analysis and Risk Identification)
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,
select an article from your list of papers in the category "A" above,
or find another article or a book (containing some relevant chapters)
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, DM/ML
(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.
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):
- relative strengths and weaknesses of the described analysis technique(s),
especially as compared to existing and/or standard techniques
- applicability in traditional and emerging domains
- relevance to our class, e.g., relation to the topics we plan
to study in CS 8317
- relevance to your work, if applicable, or to your future professional
career goals.
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 2-3 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,
and do your presentation on 4/1/22
(see the individual paper presentation schedule).
Hw#2/RS1 and #3/RS2: Paper Summary/Critique
Due date: 4/14/2022 for hw#2 and 4/28/2022 for hw#3
You can choose to do either a "Reliability/R" paper first or
a "Safety/S" paper first as Hw#2,
probably depending on your choice of project topic,
and do the other one as Hw#3.
Hw#2/3-R: SRE 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 CS 8317 and
to your work/future-career.
Some specifics about this assignment are listed below:
-
The selected paper should be a published one
(see hw#1/L literature research description above),
and NOT a general background or survey paper
(which might be appropriate for Hw#1-PartII, but not for this one!).
-
Again, 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, and should make up about
half the length of your essay),
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, if applicable,
or to your future professional career.
-
Give full citation details
(for example reference listing, see either of our textbooks),
and provide a copy of the original abstract in the appendix
(not counted towards your 3-5 page limit).
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,
again, in the appendix.
Hw#2/3-S: SRE Paper Summary/Critique
Repeat assignment Hw#2/3-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: March 17, 2022.
Last update: March 26, 2022.