The main goal is to provide the fundamentals of Software Engineering. More specifically the main topics presented are: Software life cycles, System requirements specification, Verification and validation along with some concepts on how to manage software development. Moreover, the main computational and architectural paradigms of sequential, concurrent and distributed systems will be presented. The expected outcomes involve both the theoretical knowledge of the above topics and the ability to identify the right methods and techniques to face software development, starting form the definition of the life cycle down to cost estimation.
More specifically, the expected outcomes are:
1. Knowledge and comprehension skills
1.1. Knowledge of the characteristics of the software development process and of its products (requirements specification, models, test cases, development plans etc);
1.2. Knowledge of the issues and methods of requirements analysis;
1.3. Knowledge of the issues of software verification and validation and of the strategies to tackle such issues;
1.4. Knowledge of the architectural and computational models of software systems.
2. Application of the knowledge and comprehension skills
2.1. Be able to apply different techniques and requirements specification languages (DFD, Petri Nets, Z, TRIO);
2.2. Be able to apply costs estimation techniques (By analogy, COCOMO, Function Point);
2.3. Be able to apply different testing approaches and to evaluate the obtained results;
2.4. Be able to apply the different architectural and computational paradigms when defining the system characteristics.
3. Autonomous thinking
3.1. Be able to evaluate the best fitting approach, in term of development process, based on requirements and constraints;
3.2. Be able to choose the specification techniques and languages depending on the characteristics of the system;
3.3. Be able to choose the validation and verification techniques with respect to the characteristics of the system, the related cost and the degree of confidence that has to be met;
3.4. Be able to choose the paradigms and the computational models depending on the characteristics of the system.
4. Ability to learn
4.1. Thanks to the skills, developed during the course, to relate the technique, methods and tools to both software main features and software development, the student is able to learn new techniques, methods and tools and to refine its ability to apply what he/she learned in an autonomous way.
5. Communication skills
5.1. Be able to use the formalisms used to analyze, specify and design software systems.