Created as part of the Master of information Technology and Master of Applied Information Technology Units - 2009.

Software verification and validation is part of the core discipline of SE. This unit is intended to provide a deep coverage of various testing techniques and analysis of results such as test coverage according to various criteria. It also builds skills and experience in the student, w.r.t. building and maintaining quality code with automated testing tools.

Software Quality Engineering is covered as the need for the culture of quality is critical for SE students. They need to believe that they are real engineers and must develop a sense of engineering ethos and an understanding of the responsibilities of an engineer in producing and maintaining quality products through techniques such as regression testing, prioritization of test artefacts etc. V and V must adhere to industry standards and SE standards.

18/7/13 Amending prerequisites - effective Semester 1 2014.

11/9/13 - Amended objectives on advice from Director Education Quality to comply with AQF requirements.

19/9/13 - Changing unit location from Clayton to Caulfield to cater for 2014 Masters students as requested by Clayton and Caulfield Associate Heads. Effective Semester 1, 2014.

22/10/2014 - Amended prerequisite requirements by adding 2015, FIT9xxx version of 2014, FIT5xxx foundation units. Approved at GPC 4/14 (Item 6.2).

11/1/16 - CE would like to have the weekly tutorials changed from 1-hour to 2-hours.Based on experiences with previous student cohorts, a large percentage of students don't have much experience in programming or discrete mathematics (which is needed for the theoretical aspects of the unit). Therefore, we need to bring these students up to speed, and the best way to do this is more in-class time.

5/10/2018: Update to prerequisites to allow Software engineering students to enrol as an approved elective. Effective 2019.

24/9/2019: Admin - adding 10 minutes reading time to the overall exam duration as per University requirements.

15/11/2019: Removing both the disestablished units and the assumed knowledge statement from the prerequisites. Due to the course structures, prereq knowledge cannot be assumed. Effective 2020.

21/09/2020 - Admin: Update to include new assessment and teaching approach fields as per Handbook requirements.

This is one of four core unit for the Software Engineering Specialisation in the Master of Information Technology (MIT) and Master of Applied Information Technology (MAIT). It is also available as an elective for all FIT masters.

This unit covers important software engineering concerns such as the role of validation and verification (V and V) in the software development life cycle. It enables students to gain an understanding of how to apply such V and V methods, quality measures and supporting tools into organisations and improve the quality and reliability of software systems.

On successful completion of this unit students should be able to:

• explain the importance of quality assurance in software engineering;
• articulate the role of validation and verification methods in the system development life cycle; key issues in software testing, testing levels and testing techniques;
• categorise and apply selection and combination of techniques and test related measures;
• measure, evaluate and analyse software under test using different quality and complexity metrics;
• develop adequate test cases to help detect software system defects using industry-strength IDEs, unit testing frameworks such as JUnit, code coverage tools such as Cobertura, and other similar products;
• Implement continuous integration (CI) at unit, integration & system testing level using a CI server such as Jenkins to automatically run regression test suites on the system under test.

020199

This unit covers the core software engineering disciplines concerned with managing and delivering quality software. Topics include processes, tools and techniques for system validation and verification, including major commercial tools used in industry. It shows how to detect, analyse and control defects in complex software systems. Inspection and testing methodologies, analysis of artefacts, robustness, quality assurance, and advanced software validation and verification methods are covered.

Technological requirements

Students are required to install the required software on their own computers to streamline the development and testing process. The required software includes:

• Tools for Software testing such as JUnit 4.x (latest version)
• Java build management Apache Maven 2.x or 3.x
• The version control system Subversion
• An open-source or commercial Java IDE (Eclipse, NetBeans or IntelliJ IDEA)

Software may be downloaded from:

• http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
• http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/
• http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads
• http://maven.apache.org/download
• A free education license for IntelliJ IDEA can be obtained from JetBrains directly.

On-campus

Peer assisted learning, Problem-based learning

Examination (2 hours and 10 minutes): 50%; In-Semester Assessments: 50%

1. Assignment 1: Test Planning, System Setup, and Code Understanding & Extension - 10% - ULO: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6
2. Assignment 2: Integration Testing & Regression Testing - 15% - ULO: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
3. Assignment 3: System & OO Testing and Software Quality Monitoring - 25% - ULO: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
4. Examination - 50% - ULO: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

6

Minimum total expected workload equals 12 hours per week comprising:

(a.) Contact hours for on-campus students:

(b.) Additional requirements (all students):

FIT

Callista prerequisites: No prerequisites for MBIS (Professional) (3341.2), MIT (2402.5), MIT Professional (3348.1), MIT (Professional) (2402.6), MIT (Honours) (3349), PGDIT (2411) and PGCIT (2423).

Callista & Handbook prerequisites: (FIT9131 and FIT9132) or equivalent

For students enrolled in 2770: MAT1830 and FIT2004