NDAK20001U Software Engineering and Architecture (SEA)
MSc Programme in Computer Science
Software engineering represents the principles, methods, tools, and techniques involved in the design, development, implementation, and maintenance of software systems.
The software architecture of a system defines “the structures of the system, which comprise software components, the externally visible properties of those components, and the relationships among them”.
In order to design a software system, we need to structure it in such a way that functional and quality requirements can be fulfilled by an implementation.
The purpose of this course is to provide an overview of the different aspects and stages involved in the engineering of software with a special focus on architectural properties of large systems. Assuming that course participants are acquainted with basic software development principles, this course will provide knowledge on and experience with the wider aspects and stages in the lifecycle of a (large) software system. During this course the students will be introduced to the general principles of software engineering, methods for addressing software engineering problems, common tools and techniques for solving software engineering problems, and methods, tools, and techniques for designing software systems and their architecture.
The course will include lectures and exercises in the following subjects:
- Project Management
- Requirements Elicitation
- Architectural Analysis, Description, Synthesis, Prototyping & Evaluation
- Software Design and Development
- Software Implementation
- Quality Assurance
- Maintenance and Evolution
- Software Business
Knowledge of
- How software systems are designed, developed, implemented, and maintained
- The necessary principles in the engineering of software systems
- Methods, tools, and techniques to design, develop, implement, and maintain software
- Quality attributes, including definitions, characterisation, and tactics
- Patterns for software design
- Software architecture design techniques
- (Architectural) design description
- Design and architecture evaluation
- Fundamental concepts of and techniques in software design
Skills to
- Manage the processes of designing, developing, implementing, and maintaining software systems
- Communicate the design and architecture of a system
- Control the quality of the produced software
- Plan the maintenance of (large) software systems
- Predict evolution of (large) software systems
- Elicit functional and quality requirements of software systems
- Design systems and software architectures so that they satisfy relevant quality constraints
- Describe existing systems and software architectures with relevant software description techniques
- Evaluate existing systems and software architectures with respect to relevant qualities
- Characterise functional and quality requirements while acting as an opponent with respect to fellow students’ workability requirements of software systems
Competences to
- Document and communicate their engineering process
- Critically read and apply existing methods, tools, and techniques
- Document and communicate the architecture of a system
- Iteratively and incrementally design a complex software system
- Analyse complex software systems with respect to their software architecture
See Absalon for a list of course literature.
Academic qualifications equivalent to a BSc degree is recommended.
It is not allowed to pass both this course and the two other courses.
- Category
- Hours
- Lectures
- 48
- Preparation
- 112
- Project work
- 224
- Exam Preparation
- 27
- Exam
- 1
- Total
- 412
As
an exchange, guest and credit student - click here!
Continuing Education - click here!
PhD’s can register for MSc-course by following the same procedure as credit-students, see link above.
- Credit
- 15 ECTS
- Type of assessment
- Oral examination, 25 minutes (including grading)
- Type of assessment details
- Oral examination with 25 minutes preparation. Part of the examination can be based on the group-based project report. There will be an individual question component and grades will be based on this.
- Exam registration requirements
To qualify for the exam the students must submit a complete and approved project report based on the course project and the student's reflections.
- Aid
- Only certain aids allowed
Only the following materials are allowed at the oral examination:
• The group-based project report
• The presentation slides
• Source code for the project
- Marking scale
- 7-point grading scale
- Censorship form
- No external censorship
Several internal examiners.
- Re-exam
Same as the ordinary exam.
The student report must be submitted no later than two weeks before the re-exam week, and must be approved for the student to qualify for the re-exam.
Criteria for exam assesment
See Learning Outcome.
Course information
- Language
- English
- Course code
- NDAK20001U
- Credit
- 15 ECTS
- Level
- Full Degree Master
- Duration
- 2 blocks
- Placement
- Block 3 And Block 4
- Schedule
- A
- Course capacity
- No limit
The number of seats may be reduced in the late registration period
Study board
- Study Board of Mathematics and Computer Science
Contracting department
- Department of Computer Science
Contracting faculty
- Faculty of Science
Course Coordinators
- Tijs Slaats (slaats@di.ku.dk)