Assessing software engineering course projects should evaluate the achievement of proposed goals, as well as the compliance with mandated standards and processes. This might require the examination of a significant volume of materials, following a consistent, repetitive and effective procedure, even for small projects. Quality assurance must be performed according to similar requirements. This paper discusses the use of quality audits, a comprehensive quality assurance procedure, as a tool for the assessment of course projects.
This paper discusses results achieved in measuring complexity, effectiveness and efficiency, in a series of related software course projects, spanning a period of seven years. We focus on how the complexity of those projects was measured, and how the success of the students in effectively and efficiently taming that complexity was assessed. This required defining, collecting, validating and analyzing several indicators of size, effort and quality; their rationales, advantages and limitations are discussed. The resulting findings helped to improve the process itself.
Function Point Analysis (FPA) is a widely used technique for measuring software size. It measures software functionality from the user's perspective, usually based on a requirements description. In many software processes, these requirements are represented by UML models. Although there have been attempts to automate the measurement process, FPA counting requires a considerable amount of interpretation which, to be reliable, should be made by experts. On the other hand, fully manual counting methods usually fail to keep synchronized with the requirements model, since requirements frequently change during the development cycle. This paper describes an approach for counting FPA and a compliant tool. This approach makes use of UML requirement models. The tool, called ReMoFP (Requirement Model Function Point counter), leaves all the counting decisions to the analyst, but supports him by ensuring consistency with the requirements represented in the models. The ReMoFP was developed by a software development laboratory in Brazil, and helped it to improve counting productivity, consistency, and maintainability.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.