Software Engineering Project Report

Report Format

 Cover Page and Individual Contributions Breakdown.

A report must have a cover page containing:

. the course title,
. group number,
. project title,
. URL of the project website
. submission date, and
. all team-member names.
. submitted to.

Individual Contributions Breakdown

The effort-breakdown table format for this report is as follows. Assume that the
team has three members and, for the sake of illustration, their individual
responsibilities are agreed to be as shown in this responsibility matrix:

Team Member Name

Member 1 Member 2 Member 3
Sec.1: Interaction Diagrams
levels

Responsibility

50 %

Sec.2: Class Diagram

100 %

Sec.3: System Architecture and

System Design 67 % 10 %

Sec.4: User Interface Design

Sec.5: Design of Tests

25 %

Sec.6: Project Management

50 %

Sec.7: Plan of Work

  Table of Contents
Check that the section headings and numbers, and page numbers listed here are correct.
The report sections are as follows:

Report #2: SYSTEM DESIGN -- Iteration 1(b) This report shall be submitted in
three steps:
1. Part 1 (Section 1 Interaction Diagrams)
2. Part 2 (Section 2 Class Diagram and Section 3 System Architecture)
3. Entire Report #2 (all sections included)

Part 1:

1. Interaction Diagrams
o Do interaction diagrams for the use cases you elaborated (“fully dressed”) in Report #1.
You should do at least sequence diagrams, but you may do some other UML interaction
diagrams, as well.
o Describe what design principles you employ in the process of assigning responsibilities to
objects. This can be done either as comment “bubbles” in the diagram, or in the caption of
the diagram.

 Project Management

Part 2:

2. Class Diagram and Interface Specification

a. Class Diagram
Show all classes and their associations. Only indicate visibilities of attributes and operations;
full details about the types and signatures should be provided in the next item.
If you cannot fit the class diagram on one page, or it looks too cluttered, create one
“overview” class diagram showing all classes and their relationships, but for each class show
only a single compartment with the class name (leave out attributes and operations).
Then on subsequent pages show partial class diagrams, with three compartments and all the
attributes and operations of a class. Make sure to indicate in diagrams and describe in text
how partial diagrams fit into the overall class diagram.
b. Data Types and Operation Signatures
Independently of the class diagram, write down class specification in UML notation. For
every class, specify data types of all attributes and operation signatures.
Define the meaning of each class, operation, and attribute in plain language.
c. Traceability Matrix
Show how your classes evolved from your domain concepts. Provide explanations for
modified names or multiple classes that evolved from a single concept—providing only a
matrix with checkmarks is not enough!
Note that if your system has many classes, the matrix may become difficult to read.
Alternatively, you may list, line-by-line, all your domain concepts and explain which classes
were derived from each concept and why.
3. System Architecture and System Design
a. Architectural Styles
Describe the architectural styles used in your design (Google search software architectural
styles example)
b. Identifying Subsystems
Draw and describe UML package diagram of subsystems in your system
c. Mapping Subsystems to Hardware
Does you system need to run on multiple computers? For example, you may have a client
(web browser) and a server (web server) subsystems, running on different machines.
If NO, skip to the next item;
If YES, what subsystems run on which machine?
d. Persistent Data Storage
Does your system need to save data that need to outlive a single execution of the system?
If NO, skip to the next item;
If YES, identify the persistent objects and select the storage management strategy, e.g., flat
files, relational database, etc.
Attach the description of the file format and/or database schema (format of database tables,
printed by the command description)
e. Network Protocol
If your system runs on a single machine, this question probably does NOT apply; skip to the
next item;
Otherwise, which communication protocol do you use, e.g., plain Java sockets, Java RMI, Java
JDBC, HTTP, etc. Explain why you made your specific choice.
If you are using plain sockets, attach the description of the communication protocol (types of
messages, message format, etc.).
f. Global Control Flow
 Execution orderness: Is your system procedure-driven and executes in a “linear”
fashion, where every user every time has to go through the same steps, or is it
an event-driven system that waits in a loop for events, and every user can generate
the actions in a different order?
 Time dependency: Is there any timers in your system?
Is your system of event-response type, with no concern for real time, or is it a real-
time system? If it is real-time, is it periodic, and what are the time constraints for
each period?
 Concurrency: Does your system use multiple threads?
If NO, skip to the next item;
If YES, identify the objects that have separate threads of control and describe any
synchronization between the threads?
g. Hardware Requirements
What system does resources your system depend upon? Examples are, screen display, disk
storage, communication network, or you may be accessing some special sensor/instrument.
Describe exact requirements for these resources in order for your system to run. For
example, you need color display, with minimum resolution of 640 × 480 pixels; minimum of 2
Gbytes hard disk space; minimum network bandwidth 56 Kbps.

 Project Management
Part 3:

4. Algorithms and Data Structures (if applicable)

a. Algorithms
Describe the algorithms that implement mathematical models from your Report #1. Does
your system use any other complex algorithms? For example, when computing a motion
trajectory for an animate figure in a game, you may use some numerical or computer-
graphics algorithms. Or, when assessing stock market movements, you may be using
statistical algorithms.
If NO, skip to the next item;
If YES, describe your algorithms. For example, for the animate figure example above, will the
path coordinates be precomputed and stored in a look-up table or will they be computed
using a spline interpolation algorithm.
It is a good idea to use activity diagrams to describe the algorithm design.
b. Data Structures
Does your system use any complex data structures, such as arrays, linked lists, hash tables, or
trees?
If NO, skip to the next item;
If YES, what criteria you used in deciding what data structure to use, e.g., performance vs.
flexibility?
5. User Interface Design and Implementation
o Describe whether and how you modified and implemented the initial screen mock-ups
developed for Report #1. Comment only on significant changes in your user interface, those
that reduce (or increase) the user effort. Changes of colors or styles are less important and
should be omitted from your report.
o The textbook does not deal much with the GUI design. Excellent guidelines for GUI design
can be found here:
Sun Microsystems, Inc. Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines. Mountain View, CA, 1999.
Available at: http://java.sun.com/products/jlf/ed2/book/
o “Ease-of-use” is generally considered a key characteristic of user interface. “Ease-of-use”
should not be confused with a flashy interface, with lots of colors, picture, graphics, etc. On
the contrary, you should avoid flashy user interfaces. “Ease-of-use” means that interface is
intuitive, easy to understand and operate, without having to ask many questions or read
voluminous documentation. A minimal user interface that is well organized should be
sufficient. You already considered the user effort as part of Report #1, and here you should
strive to minimize the user effort, thus maximizing the “ease-of-use”.
6. Design of Tests
Note that for this report you are just designing your tests; you will program and run those tests as
part of work for your first demo, see the list here.
. List and describe the test cases that will be programmed and used for unit testing of your
software.
a. Discuss the test coverage of your tests.
b. Describe your Integration Testing strategy and plans on how you will conduct it.

Describe also your plans for testing any algorithms, non-functional requirements, or user interface
requirements that you might have stated in your Report #1.

7. Project Management and Plan of Work

. Merging the Contributions from Individual Team Members
Compiling the final copy of the report from everyone’s work, ensuring consistency, uniform
 formatting and appearance.
Describe what issues were encountered and how they were tackled.
a. Project Coordination and Progress Report
What use cases have been implemented?
What is already functional, what is currently being tackled?
List and describe other relevant project management activities.
b. Plan of Work
List the projected milestones and dates by which you plan to accomplish them. Preferably,
you should use Gantt charts for planning and scheduling your project.
c. Breakdown of Responsibilities
 List the names of modules and classes that each team member is currently
responsible for developing, coding, and testing
 Who will coordinate the integration?
 Who will perform and integration testing? (The assumption is that the unit testing
will be done for each unit by the student who developed that unit.)
8. References
The list of references should contain exact references and URLs of any material that is used in the
project and does not come from the textbook.

UML Modeling and Diagramming Tools

 StarUML http://staruml.sourceforge.net/en/
see also StarUML @ Wikipedia
Open-source UML modeling toolsupports most of the diagram types
specified in UML 2.0
 UMLet http://www.umlet.com/
Open-source UML tool; runs stand-alone or as an Eclipse plug-in on
Windows, OS X, and Linux
 Visual Paradigm for UML (Community Edition)
http://www.visual-paradigm.com/product/vpuml/editions/community.jsp
The Community Edition is free for non-commercial use; It puts a
“Community Edition” watermark on your diagrams; Runs on Windows
XP/Vista/7, Linux, Mac OS X, etc.
 Netbeans UML Plug-in http://www.netbeans.org/features/uml/
Does not support all UML diagram types, but supports forward and reverse
engineering
 ArgoUML http://argouml.tigris.org/
see also ArgoUML @ Wikipedia
It used UML 1.4 notation last time I checked
 Gliffy - Online Diagram Software and Flowchart Software
see more Diagramming software @ Wikipedia
 IBM Rational UML Developer Tools