Engineering Practices for Building Quality Software

Engineering Practices for Building Quality Software

This course is part of Software Development Lifecycle Specialization

Instructor: Kevin Wendt

51,007 already enrolled

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5 modules

Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.

470 reviews

Intermediate level

Some related experience required

Flexible schedule

2 weeks at 10 hours a week

Learn at your own pace

88%

Most learners liked this course

5 modules

Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.

470 reviews

Intermediate level

Some related experience required

Flexible schedule

2 weeks at 10 hours a week

Learn at your own pace

88%

Most learners liked this course

What you'll learn

You will learn how to quantiatively measure design quality attributes.
You will establish feasible and testable scenarios for evaluating quality attributes in software architecture.
You will develop skills to ensure quality in developing code beyond correct functionality alone.
You will understand quality approaches to post-development stages of the lifecycle.

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Assessments

3 assignments¹

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Taught in English

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This course is part of the Software Development Lifecycle Specialization

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There are 5 modules in this course

Agile embraces change which means that team should be able to effectively make changes to the system as team learns about users and market. To be good at effectively making changes to the system, teams need to have engineering rigor and excellence else embracing change becomes very painful and expensive.

In this course, you will learn about engineering practices and processes that agile and traditional teams use to make sure the team is prepared for change. In additional, you will also learn about practices, techniques and processes that can help team build high quality software. You will also learn how to calculate a variety of quantitative metrics related to software quality. This is an intermediate course, intended for learners with a background in software development. To succeed in the course, you should have experience developing in modern programming languages (e.g., Java, C#, Python, JavaScript), an understanding of software development lifecycle models, familiarity with UML diagrams (class and sequence diagrams), and a desire to better understand quality aspects of software development beyond program correctness. At the end of this course, you will be able to comfortably and effectively participate in various techniques and processes for building secure and high quality software.

In this module, you will be introduced to the concept of quality as it relates to software.

What's included

1 video1 reading

In this module, you will learn about a variety of quality metrics including how to calculate them. A discussion of design patterns follows, allowing you to gain a deeper understanding of the quality they provide and exposure to several important patterns.

What's included

7 videos11 readings1 assignment2 discussion prompts

7 videosTotal 42 minutes

What is good design?5 minutes
Measuring Coupling6 minutes
Measuring Cohesion3 minutes
Additional Measures of Quality10 minutes
Introduction to Patterns and the Observer Pattern6 minutes
Strategy Pattern7 minutes
Adapter Pattern6 minutes

11 readingsTotal 160 minutes

Quality Attributes according to Microsoft10 minutes
CMU SEI Technical Report on Quality Attributes30 minutes
Coupling Factor10 minutes
Lack of Cohesion of Methods25 minutes
Lack of Documentation (as a metric)10 minutes
Metric Definitions - SonarQube15 minutes
Further Reading on Observer Pattern10 minutes
Further Readings on Strategy Pattern #115 minutes
Further Readings on Strategy Pattern #215 minutes
Further Readings on Adapter #110 minutes
Further Readings on Adapter #210 minutes

1 assignmentTotal 20 minutes

Quality in Design20 minutes

2 discussion promptsTotal 20 minutes

What is Software?10 minutes
Are these useful?10 minutes

In this module, you will create Scenarios in order to document and verify quality attributes relevant to software architecture, including usability, performance, and more. Then, you will examine one specific quality attribute and its implications: security.

What's included

7 videos1 reading1 peer review

7 videosTotal 40 minutes

What is Software Architecture?4 minutes
Architectural Styles5 minutes
View, Viewpoint, and Perspective5 minutes
Writing Scenarios8 minutes
Security Perspective6 minutes
Attack Trees6 minutes
Security Tactics6 minutes

1 readingTotal 15 minutes

ISO/IEC/IEEE Systems and software engineering — Architecture description15 minutes

1 peer reviewTotal 60 minutes

Assessing Quality through Scenarios60 minutes

In this module, you will explore a variety of quality aspects of the implementation stage of the lifecycle. You will also evaluate coding style guides and static analysis tools. Finally, you will analyze self-documentation in open-source code and identify the capabilities of version control and automated build tools.

What's included

7 videos8 readings1 assignment3 peer reviews2 discussion prompts

7 videosTotal 61 minutes

Code Style12 minutes
Code Style Examples6 minutes
Debugging8 minutes
Static Analysis4 minutes
Commenting10 minutes
Version Control Systems12 minutes
Build Process8 minutes

8 readingsTotal 90 minutes

Tabs vs. Spaces5 minutes
Bad Coding Standards5 minutes
Static Analysis Tools15 minutes
Git and GitHub10 minutes
Intro to Make10 minutes
A closer look at Apache Ant15 minutes
Gradle15 minutes
Comparison: Ant, Maven, and Gradle15 minutes

1 assignmentTotal 30 minutes

Quality in Implementation30 minutes

3 peer reviewsTotal 240 minutes

Code Style90 minutes
Static Analysis60 minutes
Commenting90 minutes

2 discussion promptsTotal 25 minutes

What is good style?15 minutes
Commenting vs. Self-documentation10 minutes

In this module, learners will discover quality in the final lifecycle stages: testing and deployment. Learners will first be instructed on the importance of test planning, understand what it means to evaluate tests and identify the benefits of test-first process. Then, a variety of resources will give learners understanding into continuous pipeline tools, allowing the learner to evaluate their potential benefits (and drawbacks) for their own projects.

What's included

5 videos15 readings1 assignment

5 videosTotal 30 minutes

Test Selection12 minutes
Test Adequacy6 minutes
Test-Driven Development4 minutes
Continuous Integration4 minutes
Continuous Delivery / Continuous Deployment5 minutes

15 readingsTotal 185 minutes

More Details of Code Coverage15 minutes
MC/DC Example20 minutes
Minimum Acceptable Code Coverage10 minutes
Jenkins - Getting Started15 minutes
Jenkins Pipelines15 minutes
SonarQube5 minutes
SQALE Indices and Indicators5 minutes
SonarQube Open Source Project Hosting15 minutes
ovirt-root on SonarCloud10 minutes
Netflix's Spinnaker10 minutes
Spinnaker10 minutes
Textbook in the field5 minutes
Deployment Best Practices15 minutes
More Deployment Info15 minutes
Beyond "Continuous"20 minutes

1 assignmentTotal 30 minutes

Quality in Testing and Deployment30 minutes

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Instructor

Instructor ratings

(89 ratings)

Kevin Wendt

University of Minnesota

6 Courses266,517 learners

Offered by

University of Minnesota

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Reviewed on Jul 11, 2022

Good videos that were well presented and interesting peer review assessments.

Reviewed on Dec 30, 2024

Really well structured and comprehensive. Lecturers presented well, were engaging and knowledgeable. Assignments were also a lot of fun. Some of the course could be updated/modernized wrt technology.

Reviewed on Feb 16, 2022

Well writtens anc challenging. I learned a lot throughout!

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