CPSC 4900 Exam 1 Questions With Correct Answers

What are the essential attributes of good software? - Answer Deliver the required functionality and performance to the user, and be maintainable, dependable and usable. What are the two fundamental types of software product? - Answer Generic products Customized Software (bespoke) What is software engineering? - Answer An engineering discipline that deals with all aspects of software production from the early stages of system specification through to maintaining the system after is has gone into use. What are the four fundamental activities in software processes? - Answer 1. Software specification 2. Software development 3. Software validation 4. Software evolution What is the difference between computer science & software engineering? - Answer Computer science is concerned with the theories and methods that underlie computers and software systems, whereas software engineering is concerned with the practical problems of producing the software. What are the 4 general issues that affect many different types of software? - Answer - Heterogeneity - Business & Social Change - Security & Trust - Scaling List 5 different types of software application: - Answer 1. System of systems 2. Standalone application 3. Entertainment systems 4. Embedded control systems 5. Data collection & analysis systems What software engineering fundamentals apply to all software systems? - Answer 1. Developed with a managed and understood process 2. Have high dependability and performance 3. The software specification and requirements should be understood and managed What are three key characteristics of the engineering of web-based software engineering? - Answer 1. Software reuse is the concept of building new systems with pre-existing components 2. Web-based systems are always developed and delivered incrementally 3. Interface development technology have emerged to support the creation of rich interfaces in a browser Recite the Agile Manifesto - Answer Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan List 3 generic process models used in software engineering: - Answer - The waterfall model - Incremental development - Integration & configuration Why are iterations limited in the waterfall model? - Answer Because of each iteration's difficulty, and the necessity for varying degrees of rework What are the three benefits of incremental development over the waterfall model? - Answer 1. The cost of implementing requirement changes is lowered 2. It's easier to get customer feedback on what's done 3. You can have early delivery of useful, even if incomplete, software What are the development stages in integration & configuration? - Answer 1. Requirements specification 2. Software discovery & evaluation 3. Requirements refinement 4. Application system configuration 5. Component adaptation and integration What are the principal requirements engineering activities? - Answer - Requirements elicitation and analysis - Requirements specification - Requirements validation Why is it increasingly irrelevant to distinguish between software development & evolution? - Answer Because the agile approach iterates between these with little documentation along the way What are the advantages to incremental development & delivery? - Answer - Customers can use the early increments as prototypes and gain experience that forms their requirements for later system increments - Customers don't have to wait until the entire system is delivered before it can benefit them - It's usually easy to incorporate changes - The most important system services are tested the most What are the two different approaches to process improvement and change that have been proposed? - Answer - Process Maturity - Agile Approach What are the identified levels in the SEI's Capability Maturity Model? - Answer - Initial - Managed - Defined - Quantitatively Managed - Optimizing What are the shared characteristics of different agile methods of software development? - Answer - The processes of specification, design, and implementation are interleaved - The system is developed in a series of increments - Extensive tool support is used to support the development process