SE 468 Final Exam Study Guide

SE 468Final Exam Guide

While the exam will cover primarily the last five lectures, materials covered in lectures 1 to 5 may be included in the exam.

Exam format:

Multiple choice, essay, true/false, matching, definitions.

Expected duration: < 1.5 hour.
Maximum time allowed 3 hours.

Topics covered

1 of 1Rev: 16 November 2009

SE 468 Final Exam Study Guide

  • Defect Removal Effectiveness
  • Phase Containment Effectiveness
  • Process and Project metrics
  • Weibull Distributions
  • Exponential distribution
  • Normal curve and six sigma
  • The Rayleigh Model
  • Reliability Growth Models
  • In-Process Metrics for Testing
  • The Fagan Inspection Process
  • Complexity Metrics and Models
  • Cyclomatic Complexity
  • Span of control
  • Fan In and Fan Out
  • Variable Span
  • Exploiting Measures
  • ami approach
  • Presentation of data
  • Object Oriented Metrics
  • Chidamber and Kemerer metrics
  • Lessons Learned for O-O Projects
  • Reliability Metric
  • Availability Metrics
  • Customer Satisfaction
  • Surveys and other methods
  • Survey methods
  • Sample size
  • Quality Assessments
  • Software Project Assessments
  • CMM and CMMI
  • Levels, features and characteristics
  • Software Process Improvement
  • Measuring Software Process Improvements

1 of 1Rev: 16 November 2009

SE 468 Final Exam Study Guide

Skills and competencies:

  • The relationship between estimation accuracy and project completion.
  • Lines of code, estimation, weaknesses etc.
  • Effort estimation

Sample Questions

The following types of questions are good examples of the types of questions I may ask.

  1. Compute cyclomatic complexity from a flow graph.
  2. Define software reliability and availability
  3. What does the Rayleigh model tell us about defect removal?
  4. Is it possible to removal all defects before delivery to the field?
  5. Name and briefly describe the five levels of the CMM.
  6. Describe two design metrics that can be used as predictors of software quality before the code is written. For each metric, explain why this metric indicates satisfaction of the high-level quality goals and how it can be measured.
  7. An Internet start-up company plans to use COCOMO to estimate the cost of development of their planned Java-based web tools. What advice would you give them about the appropriateness and accuracy of COCOMO for these projects?
  8. Why is process improvement unlikely to occur unless an organization defines and manages its processes?
  9. Software inspections are widely used for verification. What are the benefits of inspection? What kinds of errors will inspection catch that testing cannot?
  10. What factors reduce the effectiveness of inspections? What can be done to address these problems?
  11. Describe the cost of quality and how it relates to defect removal effectiveness.
  12. Your project requires you to code and test a product as a subcontractor. The prime contractor will create the requirements and design. Specify what measurements you would collect to:
  1. Assess your team’s productivity and quality.
  2. Assess the impact of requirements and design changes that occurred after coding and testing began.
  1. You have decided to initiate an Inspection Program at your company. Describe how you would convince management and technical staff that it is a cost-effective initiative.

1 of 1Rev: 16 November 2009