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.

November 2013: Changed pre-reqs, following discussions with relevant teaching staff.

September 2013: Changed unit learning outcomes

This unit has been updated as part of a 2009 review and comparison of data with current Handbook, Syllabus + and Callista data.

November 2017: Amendment to prerequisites to allow for teach-out of old courses (2770 and 2380): Add FIT2099 as an alternative to FIT2024.

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

Software Engineers must be able to formulate and apply sound VandV techniques, quality engineering processes and standards to produce quality products and solution.

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 fundamental products, processes and techniques for system validation and verifications including testing methodologies, static program analysis and code quality measurement and monitoring. Open-source tools will be used to apply in practice knowledge learnt about software testing from a theoretical perspective. Inspection and testing methodologies, analysis of artefacts, robustness, performance analysis configuration management, quality assurance plan and standards, compliance, assessment, certification issues are covered. It shows how to predict, analyse and control defects in complex software systems.

Pezze, Mauro, and Young, Michal (20008). Software Testing and Analysis: Process, Principles and Techniques, Wiley Publ.

Bentley, John (1999). Programming Pearls (2nd edition), Addison-Wesley Professional.

Patton, Ron (2005). Software Testing (2nd edition), Sams Publ.

Examinations (2 hours): 50%; In-Semester Assessment: 50%

Semester 1, 2011 with the major revision re: assessment and the date of introduction with this assessment %. This is the major revision proposed in this MONATAR update made on the 14th July 2010.

Other changes that have been done on the 14/7/2010 are minor wording changes in ReasonsForIntroduction/RIntro; UnitObjectives/Objectives, and UnitContent/PrescribedReading, and including the prescribed text which aligns the MONATAR against the Unit guide.

A final exam of 50% is introduced and the marks allocated to Assignments now total 50%. This is different from previous years of no final exam worth 50%.

The rationale for introducing the final exam is to comply with FIT Grad/PGrad unit final exam requirements and also to address the different learning styles of students coming through. Hopefully this strategy will engage the students and encourage them to learn more during lectures with short quizzes planned with auditory response technology for 2011 as opposed to the standard written work for hurdles and written test.

Also, in previous offerings, a written test covering theoritical aspects and ~ 8 hurdles during lecture/tutes took the place of final exam. In the previous offerings, a research/essay paper was the final assignment which used to cause a lot of excitement from atleast some students in the past as students had the opportunity to submit their paper with reviews and revisions from myself to an international conference. Over the years, we have published 3 such papers in automated software engineering and testing conferences. However, in recent years, students are not keen on writing papers. So, the research paper component has been dropped from 2010.

6

Minimum total expected workload equals 12 hours per week comprising:

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

(b.) Additional requirements (all students):

FIT

MAT1830 and FIT2004 and (FIT2024 or FIT2099) and FIT3077.