Software Engineering

The major issues faced by software industries today are: the software produce involves bugs. The project formed is not economical , is not obtained within time frame ad does not meet customer's expectations.

If an RF amplifier amplifies the incoming signal by 200 times, the power gain of the amplifier is +25.9 dB. Power is proportional to voltage squared, so the power gain is 400. The decibel scale is 3 times log2 of the power change.

learn hard and keep working until you don't get the money

yes

The Software Development Process is concurrent with the Systems Engineering Process

Software applications that are relatively easy to prototype almost always involve

human-machine interaction and/or heavy computer graphics. Other applications that

are sometimes amenable to prototyping are certain classes of mathematical

algorithms, subset of command driven systems and other applications where results

can be easily examined without real-time interaction. Applications that are more

difficult to prototype include control and process control functions, many classes of

real-time applications and embedded software.

Dear ggxbnjj

Early/single

I will answer this as the person responsible for testing.

The customer can do what they want. My job is to tell them what is possible. I may not be able to test/retest in the given time. I then need to inform the customer. The customer can still go ahead with releasing the software.

There is another very important part to this. When I am part of a test team, in these situations, I tell the testers that they can’t later say, ‘..I told you so..’. What this means is if they think there is a significant risk, they need to inform the customer. They need to know the risk. It is not good enough to say, ‘I don’t know…’

Here is an example:

On one of my projects, a manager said, ‘we need to release next week’. But we hadn’t started testing the 64-bit version. Manager said, ‘I don’t care’.

At that point, I said, ‘let me get back by the end of the day if we have any reservations.’ I then told him that we will make sure basic functionality works. If there are blocking issues, we will revisit. I also made a list of what we will test and what we won’t. We worked together to refine the list.

It’s very important that I will never blame the manager for his decisions. I was part of that decision. If I felt strongly about risk, I would speak up. If I didn’t speak up, it was my mistake, not his.

Just to repeat, you dont’ have an option to say, ‘I don’t have time’. What you need to say is, ‘In the given time, I can test X. This then leaves the risk that customers may use this feature and find problems.’

Integration testing refers to the process of testing just how well integrated several software components are working together. Both the individual elements as well as the system as a whole are tested via data inputs.

Pursuing a graduate degree is a big commitment as it will to a very large extent determine your career path. Also, applying for graduate programs is no easy work so do plan carefully before deciding on attending graduate school.

1. The structure of a graduate degree program is very different from that of an an undergraduate degree. For example, graduate students are required to conduct their own research, and sit for a written and an oral exam two years after then enter the program. In some universities, the students would have to construct their own writing list, and the materials on that list will be tested in the exams. This structure requires a lot of self-discipline as the professors see graduate students as their peers and thus tend to be more hands off.

2. A graduate degree is an expensive investment. Most master’s program do not provide much funding to the students so before enrolling to a program unfunded, students have to evaluate whether it is worth it to take out a loan. In humanities, a master’s degree is not particularly helpful for career development. However, most a master degree in engineering, computer science, and economics will allow the graduate to quickly advance their career. Almost all PhD programs provide at least some, if not full, funding to their students, in the form of teaching/research stipends or fellowships.

3. Do enough research to gain a better knowledge of the discipline before and after the graduate application period. The quality of graduate programs varies discipline by discipline, so it is important to look up sources such as the National Research Council to determine which universities have the leading programs in the field. After the application some students may get multiple offers from different graduate schools. At that time, it is important for them to visit the campuses, talk to the graduate students there, and ask the faculty members questions regarding funding, teaching load, and research.

Official tender with closed set of requirement and fixed price. Usually tender covers up to X% of “changes and additional requirements”, so small stuff can be changed and added later, but everything beyond that - nope.

You get an Excel or Word with several thousands of requirements (big and complex and trivial, with one line can cost zero and other can cost $1M to develop), you estimate the effort, add risk factors, and submit your proposal together with technical and managerial descriptions.

Good luck.

Anything that both satisfies their requirements as-written, and fits into technical description that was submitted will (must) be accepted by the customer - or they will have to bargain like “let’s cancel this requirement, but instead please implement that one”.

For governmental / military project managing all those requirements, what was amended, what was added, who owes what to whom, how it affects timelines, subcontractors (sometimes they are enforced by the customer and paid directly by him), is a full time and very non trivial job.

There are many types of projects that can’t be managed in Agile way, or delivered in Agile way (they still can be developed in Agile way, as it is internal matter of the dev team).

Customer won’t see anything before first review (that was requested as part of the tender, and was budgeted for).

Oh, forgot the reviews.

Interface Design Review, Integration Design Review, HMI Design Review, Safety Committee, Cyber Committee, Field Experiment Design Review, most of them come twice (preliminary and critical), for some you can add third - “Readiness Review”.

For big project that are delivered in phases you do the whole set two-tree times, for features of each phase (obviously first set takes the most effort).

Don’t forget logistics - spare parts program, operator training, technician training, certification programs, delivery of trainers and simulators.

Multiple pair-integration sessions, separate entity that manages integration and coordination of all systems (not only software. To be able to deploy in X hours your software must boot up, but hardware must be able to work for some time even before AC lowered temp in the shelter to the “long-running-threshold” value. Think about hundreds of interdependencies).

Everything must be coordinated.

Then come field tests. Test grounds must be booked, plans reviewed, safety issues validated, roads and air space closed, all the stuff shipped, engineers and technicians sent over (sometimes hundreds of them). To prepare all that takes months if not years. and usually you can’t “move” it in time. If something is not ready - or experiment will be delayed (very big issue), or this feature won’t be tested at all (bad), or experiment plan will be amended to allow testing of whatever can be tested (non ideal, but acceptable).

Then, when everything works and you deliver it - sometimes it is only IOC - initial operational concept. That means - pilot version. Customer will play with it for a year or two, and then order more - with changes, both in hardware and software, to cover for all deficiencies discovered in this “evaluation” period.

So trust me, there are many projects where “push-to-production” just doesn’t have a chance.

You can’t “eventually” get Air Traffic Control system (and I am talking about ground component only, not real avionics) if you start with something that can handle one plane that flies on the straight line, and continuously improve it.

You can’t deliver a “minimally valuable product” for nuclear station management system, and improve it with two-weeks sprints.

You can develop it in this way “internally”, you can give it to QA so they will test only very specific stuff (use-cases and scenarios) that is already implemented, but you never give anything to the customer until is passes FAT, SAT and full integration tests.

Version release process (you know, from check-in through Jenkins etc) can take months, and cost hundred thousands of $$$ (and I don’t include field tests, let’s assume everything can be done in QA/Integration laboratories).

Cost is not an exaggeration:

$1M is cost of employing 6–8 engineers for a year. So if version validation takes 2–3 months (different subcontractors, different countries, supervision from the customer and various certification authorities), and all over there are 10 people working on that (system engineers, programmers, part of managerial effort goes into that, QA people, integrators) you easily get into $K250–300 area for a main contractor. Add to it internal expenses of the customer (it cost them too to get a new version, redeploy, train, etc) and subcontractors, and you are in half-million area. This is for small “maintenance” release, not major delivery of significantly new functionality.

So yes, there are projects that are rather be done using Waterfall approach.

A "senior software engineer" is somebody who's been on the job for more than about 3 years. It's a pretty flexible definition.

Test and Evaluation

Neither, it should be performed by a qualified Software Tester and witnessed by a Software Quality Engineer, a Systems Engineer, and the customer/user representative.

The Software Developer should be entirely out of the picture at this point and only be responsible for fixing bugs found during validation.

They show the handling of errors and other unexpected events.

Software Engineering is very important as most of the world is moving to computers. IT is the future of the world.

An SRS document is formed after requirement engineering. The SRS stands for Software Requirement Specification.

Yes, developers do perform software tests.

no