BSc Computer Science and Mathematics

This course covers many aspects of software engineering and contains much essential information about working with a large codebase authored by many programmers, most of whom are not around.

This unit aims to help students appreciate the reality of team-based software development in an industrial environment, with customer needs, budget constraints and delivery schedules to be met.  Through hands-on experience with an industry-strength development toolkit applied to a large open source software system, students will gain an appreciation of the challenges of green and brownfield software development, along with an understanding of the core software engineering concepts that underpin current best practice.  Students will have the core skill set needed by a practicing software engineer, and will be ready to become productive and valuable members of any modern software team.

Assessment is based on:

1. Two team-based exercises, making changes to the open source system used in the course unit.  Together these contribute towards 60% of the total course unit mark.
2. Two individual coursework exercises together contributing towards 10% of the mark for the course unit.
3. A multiple choice examination, at the end of the semester.  This contributes towards 30% of the total course unit mark.

• Describe fundamental concepts in software engineering (including complex systems, stages of development lifecycle, quality assurance, testing). 
   
• Perform basic development management tasks (e.g., planning, estimation, problem description, issue tracking)
   
• Perform basic software construction tasks (e.g., design, debugging, refactoring, artifact management) in the context of a development project. 
   
• Interpret, evaluate, and create a variety of technical analyses and assessments (e.g., of libraries or technologies) and present results at various levels of detail (e.g., to colleagues vs. to managers vs. to customers). 
   
• Describe relations between technical details and business, social, and ethical values.
   
• Assess the effects of social and technical trends on projects and the profession (e.g., how generative AI affects product development and, as a product, society). 
   
• Complete a small scale, “from scratch” software engineering project from start to finish comparable to what would be needed for a 3rd year project. 

Lectures
1 introductory lecture in semester 1, week 1.

Workshops
One 2 hour workshop each week.  In these sessions, you will gain practical, hands-on experience of the techniques being taught.

Team Study Sessions
Two 1 hour sessions per week.  In these sessions you will:

• Work with your team on the team coursework
• Meet your industrial mentor (2 sessions per team)
• Get your team coursework marked in a face-to-face interview (3 sessions per team).

Offline Study
A number of off-line study activities and readings are provided, that build on and consolidate the topics covered in workshops.  These are compulsory and are assessed in the coursework and exam.

Staff and TAs will be on hand to provide face-to-face informal feedback during workshops and team study sessions.

The RoboTA system will provide continuous feedback on aspects of the team marking system, using the Jenkins continuous integration system.

TAs will also provide written and verbal feedback on coursework, once marking is complete.

COMP23311 reading list can be found on the Department of Computer Science website for current students.

Course unit materials

Links to course unit teaching materials can be found on the School of Computer Science website for current students.

course textbook https://software-eng.netlify.app/