Team Formation | Project Statement | SRS| Design | Test Cases | Project Review | Presentation

The goal of this project is to go through all aspects of the software development life cycle in a small team. This will give you real experience in each stage from problem formation, requirements gathering and analysis, design, and testing. Unfortunately due to time constraints you will not be implementing the actual software. Meaning you will not write any software for this project.  You will use UML diagrams, text descriptions, and scheduling tools to create your deliverables.

You are starting a new small software company. This is your first project. You want to create something that people will use. You are the software team. You should assume other teams exist in your company (marketing sales, tech support, etc...).  These other teams will be stakeholders (people who have an interest in what you're doing). NOTE: These are virtual people, you have to think for them in this project, or you can ask the professor or TA to answer questions to these people. 

You are encouraged to choose your own project however it needs to have the following characteristics:
- Multiple screens (about 3-7 screens)
- Data storage and retrieval in a database
- Multiple types of users (basic and power user, data entry and managers, etc...) that have different privileges

The project can be any type of software (web-based, desktop application, game, embedded app (mobile phone, PDA, etc..)). You can also choose to do this project based on an existing software application. Be creative, but keep it manageable. 

Some sample ideas are:

• New software for your phone that tells you a song title if you record part of the song with your phone
• A bank teller's application to process deposits, withdrawals, and perform reporting for management
• A supermarket checkout system
• A networked tic-tac-toe (or checkers or any card game) game for 2 or more players
• A multiuser cell-phone treasure hunt where you use object recognition and a cell picture to "find" an object. (Note: You would need to make a simplifying assumptions here that the cell phone has a command "boolean result = isPicture("cow", picture)" for example.)

Management Information Sheet
For each deliverable you will assigning a manager from your team. The manager has the overall responsability to make sure the deliverable is completed on-time and is a high-quality product. The manager should:

• schedule meeetings to discuss the deliverable
• assign tasks to people to complete the deliverable
• review the deliverable and provide feedback for revisions
• assign other reviewers (if needed)
• anything else that needs to get done to make the deliverable successful
• the manager may do a small task or two themselves, but the goal is to manage the work of others, not to complete the deliverable by yourself. In general the manager should do none or the fewest number of tasks (because they are spending time reviewing work and coordinating work, checking the status to make sure things are going to be done on-time, etc...).
  
  
• everyone on the team must be the manager for at least one deliverable!

Project Overview Presentation

Team Formation (approx 1 page)

Goal: During this stage you will form into groups of 4-5 students. You may choose your own teams, however they may be adjusted if necessary to have equal numbers of students in all teams. If you cannot find a team, please see me and you will be assigned to a team.

One challenge of software engineering (and life in general) is making decisions based on limited information. You need to choose a team, but you do not have enough information about the other students in the class to do this well, but you need to do it. To maximize your decision-making ability you will fill out the following form, and then have 20 mins in class to discuss the form and anything else with fellow students to come up with the best team you can.
Team Interview Sheet

Deliverable: A short written document (email is fine) including:

• Your team (company) name 
• Your team member's names
• Two project ideas for the software you would like to design in order of preference. I expect this short description to be about 4-5 sentences per project. Include any simplifying assumptions you know at the time. (You can make more later during the design phase if required.)
• The team interview sheets from each team member

This should be in a notebook or folder you will use for the entire semester. It should be at least 1.5" with a divider of some sort for each deliverable below (Team Formation, Project Statement, SRS, etc...). You will turn this in with new pages added for every deliverable during the project.

Project Statement (2-4 pages)

Your next deliverable is a detailed project statement. This should describe in more detail what the software is and what it will do. Do not make assumptions about what people already know. For example, don't say "this is an email system like Outlook". Assume no one has seen Outlook before, so what will YOUR email system do? The objective of this document is to get upper-management buy-in that this project will be good for your company.

The project statement should include:

• A detailed description of the software
• A conceptual mock-up of a possible user-interface (this doesn't need to be complete, just an overall feel for how the user may interact with your system)
• Who will use it (number of users, types of users, etc...)
• What other systems or applications it will interact with (databases, other software programs, etc...)
• Who you believe the stakeholders are
• Why you feel this software will be profitable for your company. (How will it make money?)
• An initial high level schedule (include the time required for requirements, design, implementation, testing and deployment, including an estimate of the number of software developers you'll want on the team).
• Management Information Sheet

Sample Project Statement it's not perfect, but it's good. Doesn't have any conceptual mock-up.


Software requirements specification (20-30 pages)

The software requirements specification will add more formality to your project statement. It should give people a detailed idea of the software you're creating, however it does not need to include implementation details/choices at this stage. For example, a requirement can be "We shall store all user information". It does NOT need to specify where (e.g. in a database, in files, etc...). Those are implementation details. A sample SRS template. Grading Rubric

The requirements spec should include:

• Use cases
• Include the main use cases for your software
• Functional Requirements
• Be sure to state your requirements clearly
• Be sure to include numbering scheme to allow traceability (every different requirement should have a unique number
• Functional requirements specify what your system does, not what the user does or other external systems you don't control. These requirements should all start with "The system shall ". Example: The system shall validate user login IDs.
• Non-Functional Requirements
• System requirements
• Performance requirements
• Usability requirements 
• Be sure to include numbering scheme to allow traceability
• Requirements Validation Plan - If you had real people to talk to, how would you validate your requirements?
• Who would you talk to? What questions would you ask them?
• What elicitation methods would you use?
• This is a plan to ensure the requirements you wrote are the right requirements. How would you make sure they are?
• Revision history should have names of people and what they did, not just the Team Name
• Table of Contents should be correct
• Fonts should be consistent (don't change fonts, sizes, etc...)and the document should look professional
• Management Information Sheet

Sample SRS from previous semester - As always note, this isn't a perfect document. You can use it as a guide, but then do things better!

Software High Level Design Specification

Goal: To complete the high level design of the software. The high level specification is used to bridge from requirements to the implementation design. For this class we will add more diagrams and details to create the high level design spec.

The software design specification should include:

• All use cases for the system including the use case diagram (may be more than one) and accompanying use case descriptions (see template)
• Class diagrams showing all the modules needed to satisfy the requirements
• Interaction diagrams to describe flow of events through at least three use case. Including:
• At least one activity diagram (with swimlanes)
• At least two sequence diagrams 
• Then one state diagram or data flow diagram for your system.
• Management Information Sheet

- Class names should be nouns
- States in a state diagram should be verbs (you're doing something in the state)


Implementation Schedule (1-2 pages)

Goal: To create a schedule for the design phase through the end of the project

See description of the software schedule.

Include the Management Information Sheet



System/Integration Test Cases

Goal: To produce a set of test cases for your project. These test cases will be for a subset of your project, not the whole thing.

You will need to turn in:

• Unit test descriptions for 3 classes (these should be 3 of your main classes that do significant work, not  your three simplest classes!)
• System test descriptions for 5 use cases
• System test description for 2 non-functional requirements
• Management Information Sheet

Unit Tests

• Describe the inputs and outputs
• Ensure you cover both valid and invalid inputs in a variety of forms
• See the detailed description of the Unit Test including the format.

System Tests

• Describe which requirements are being validated which Use Case is being tested.
• The test case should follow the Sample System Test Case.
• Make sure to enter the requirements validated by each test or a single step as appropriate.
• Make sure to add in the alternate flows

Helpful Hints:

• If a test step says "the user presses button x or button y" -- make two test cases, one for button x and one for button y.
• If a test result says "if the password was valid, the user goes forward, otherwise they get sent to the login screen" -- make two tests, one for a valid login and one for an invalid login
• Test cases should be repeatable and clearly test one scenario

Project Team Review (3-5 pages)

Goal: To describe your experience working in a team environment. Including lessons learned, how you would work differently in the future and your description of each team member's contribution. For more information, see this more detailed version of the project team review assignment.

NOTE: Each student must submit this individually!


Presentation (7-12 slides)

Each group will present their project for 10 minutes. The presentation should include:

1. Project overview - what software you're developing and how it is used
2. Explain your requirements diagrams (use-cases) and validation plan
3. Explain your software designs
4. Describe your implementation schedule
5. Describe your team's lessons learned and how you would pursue a team software development task in the future
6. Management Information Sheet

The presentation slides for 2-4 can be taken directly form your previous deliverables. 1 and 5 are just bullet point summaries of other deliverables.

I will use this form to grade the presentations. It provides more information about the required presentation content.


Grading

The project is a significant portion of your overall grade in the class. Each student is expected to participate equally in the project. The final grade on the project will be an average of the grades on all project deliverables, the presentation, and your individual contribution to the project overall. (The SRS  will be weighted heavier than the other deliverables). If you are having problems with people not participating equally on the team see me EARLY. Do not wait till the end of the semester, at that point there is little I can do.

You will have the opportunity during the class to revise and resubmit most deliverables to achieve a better score if desired.