CS / SWE 421 - Final Review Topics

The following things are what I expect you to know for the CS / SWE 421 Final

• Everything from the midterm review (the final will be comprehensive approximately 15-30% from the first half of class and 70-85% from the second half). Generally though, you can concentrate on the "big things" like the software process and concepts from the midterm and project.
  
• UML
• Be able to read/create sequence diagrams
• Be able to read/create an ERD 
• Be able to read and create a DFD
• What's the difference between a Level 0 and Level 1 DFD?
• Be able to read/create a state diagram
• Including state transitions, guards, activities during transition, etc...
• Analysis Modeling
• What is the analysis phase? Why do we do it?
• Know how to perform a grammatical parse. What is this used for?
• Know how to create and use CRC cards. What are these used for?
• What are the basic four things that go in an analysis model?
• Scenario based elements
• Flow oriented elements
• Behavioral elements
• Class based elements
• Scrum
• Be able to explain what Scrum is
• How does Scrum planning poker work?
• How does Scrum track progress?
• Design Engineering
• Difference between analysis and design phase
• Know the definition of cohesion 
• Know the definition of coupling
• Project Management
• Why is it necessary to quantify your plans
• Define stakeholders and be able to give examples
• Scheduling
• Know how to create a schedule
• Definitions to know: critical path, slack, milestone, dependency, resource leveling
• Know the dependency types: FS, FF
• Given a small schedule, be able to manually level your resources
• How to read a Gantt chart
• Know how to determine the critical path given a list of tasks
• Draw the network
• Determine the critical path
• Know the definition of scope creep and some strategies to deal with it
• Give three things that can motivate people other than money
• Explain why you need to manage expectations and what that means
• Explain the concept of problem decomposition and how it relates to scheduling
• Know the jobs of a project manager
• Cost estimation
• Schedule estimation
  
• Risk management
• Defect tracking
• Managing and motivating your people
• Testing Strategies and Techniques
• Why do we need new testing techniques? (Why is the "old" view of testing a problem or what are advantages of the "new version"?)
• Why is it important to have testers involved at all stages of the software lifecycle?
• Know definition of verification 
• Know definition of validation
• Know definition of software fault, software error, software failure
• Know the definition of testing and debugging using the fault/failure terminology
• Be able to explain observability and controllability and their impact on testing
• Know the definitions of static and dynamic verification and what each can and cannot do
• Know how inspections can and cannot be used and what they may find
• What is an example of a static testing tool?
• How do you perform dynamic testing?
  
• Know the definition of white box and black box testing
• Understand how test criteria are used to create test requirements
• Given a structure, if I ask you to create test cases or requirements from the criteria, be able to do it for each structure
• Graphs
• Cover every node
• Cover every path
• Cover every edge
  
• Logical expressions
• predicate, clause, combinatorial (active clause coverage)
  
• Input domain characterization
• A test case for each possible input partition. 
• Understand how to create partitions given code or pseudo-code
  
• Syntactic structures
• Explain the basic steps in mutation testing
  
• Explain what a coverage analysis tool does
• Know the advantages of using test coverage criteria (slide 45 in Testing Techniques slides)
• Explain the difference between unit testing and system testing
• Know the basic ideas behind JUnit
  
• Cyclomatic Complexity
• What does it measure?
• Is it an example of static or dynamic analysis?
• Know how to compute it given a small program or graph
  
• Software Metrics
• Explain what is meant by an actionable metric
• What every project should measure -- inputs, outputs, results. Be able to give examples and how they are actionable
• Explain what a function point is and how they are used. 
• Know the definition and an example of measuring quality:
• Correctness
• Maintainability
• Integrity 
• Usability
• Define and calculate Defect Removal Efficiency
  
• Design Engineering
• Difference between analysis and design phase
• What basic things go into a design spec
• architecture design
• component design
• UI design
• data design
• Explain what a design principle is
• Explain what a design pattern is
• Explain what a design metric is
• Design principles you should know
• Single Responsibility Principle
• Law of Demeter (Principle of Least Knowledge)
• Given a situation you should know which of these apply or are being violated
• Design patterns you should know
• Singleton pattern
• Command
• Factory
• Know the definition of cohesion 
• Know the definition of coupling

Check back for updates! Last updated: 5/04/2009 4:00PM

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Not covered yet in Spring 2009 -- If we didn't cover the topics below, you do not need to know them for the final.

• Refactoring
• What is a basic definition of refactoring?
• What is a danger in refactoring and how to you lessen the risk?
• Risk Management
• Know the concept of a Risk Management plan and the 4 things that should be documented for each risk:
• Description of the risk
• Likelihood of occurrence
• Impact 
• Mitigation strategy