Engineering Practices for Building Quality Software

Engineering Practices for Building Quality Software

This course is part of Software Development Lifecycle Specialization

Instructor: Kevin Wendt

49,806 already enrolled

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5 modules

Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.

464 reviews

Intermediate level

Some related experience required

Flexible schedule

2 weeks at 10 hours a week

Learn at your own pace

89%

Most learners liked this course

5 modules

Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.

464 reviews

Intermediate level

Some related experience required

Flexible schedule

2 weeks at 10 hours a week

Learn at your own pace

89%

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 videos Total 42 minutes

What is good design? 5 minutes
Measuring Coupling 6 minutes
Measuring Cohesion 3 minutes
Additional Measures of Quality 10 minutes
Introduction to Patterns and the Observer Pattern 6 minutes
Strategy Pattern 7 minutes
Adapter Pattern 6 minutes

11 readings Total 160 minutes

Quality Attributes according to Microsoft 10 minutes
CMU SEI Technical Report on Quality Attributes 30 minutes
Coupling Factor 10 minutes
Lack of Cohesion of Methods 25 minutes
Lack of Documentation (as a metric) 10 minutes
Metric Definitions - SonarQube 15 minutes
Further Reading on Observer Pattern 10 minutes
Further Readings on Strategy Pattern #1 15 minutes
Further Readings on Strategy Pattern #2 15 minutes
Further Readings on Adapter #1 10 minutes
Further Readings on Adapter #2 10 minutes

1 assignment Total 20 minutes

Quality in Design 20 minutes

2 discussion prompts Total 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 videos Total 40 minutes

What is Software Architecture? 4 minutes
Architectural Styles 5 minutes
View, Viewpoint, and Perspective 5 minutes
Writing Scenarios 8 minutes
Security Perspective 6 minutes
Attack Trees 6 minutes
Security Tactics 6 minutes

1 reading Total 15 minutes

ISO/IEC/IEEE Systems and software engineering — Architecture description 15 minutes

1 peer review Total 60 minutes

Assessing Quality through Scenarios 60 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 videos Total 61 minutes

Code Style 12 minutes
Code Style Examples 6 minutes
Debugging 8 minutes
Static Analysis 4 minutes
Commenting 10 minutes
Version Control Systems 12 minutes
Build Process 8 minutes

8 readings Total 90 minutes

Tabs vs. Spaces 5 minutes
Bad Coding Standards 5 minutes
Static Analysis Tools 15 minutes
Git and GitHub 10 minutes
Intro to Make 10 minutes
A closer look at Apache Ant 15 minutes
Gradle 15 minutes
Comparison: Ant, Maven, and Gradle 15 minutes

1 assignment Total 30 minutes

Quality in Implementation 30 minutes

3 peer reviews Total 240 minutes

Code Style 90 minutes
Static Analysis 60 minutes
Commenting 90 minutes

2 discussion prompts Total 25 minutes

What is good style? 15 minutes
Commenting vs. Self-documentation 10 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 videos Total 30 minutes

Test Selection 12 minutes
Test Adequacy 6 minutes
Test-Driven Development 4 minutes
Continuous Integration 4 minutes
Continuous Delivery / Continuous Deployment 5 minutes

15 readings Total 185 minutes

More Details of Code Coverage 15 minutes
MC/DC Example 20 minutes
Minimum Acceptable Code Coverage 10 minutes
Jenkins - Getting Started 15 minutes
Jenkins Pipelines 15 minutes
SonarQube 5 minutes
SQALE Indices and Indicators 5 minutes
SonarQube Open Source Project Hosting 15 minutes
ovirt-root on SonarCloud 10 minutes
Netflix's Spinnaker 10 minutes
Spinnaker 10 minutes
Textbook in the field 5 minutes
Deployment Best Practices 15 minutes
More Deployment Info 15 minutes
Beyond "Continuous" 20 minutes

1 assignment Total 30 minutes

Quality in Testing and Deployment 30 minutes

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Instructor

Instructor ratings

(87 ratings)

Kevin Wendt

University of Minnesota

6 Courses 261,956 learners

Offered by

University of Minnesota

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Reviewed on Aug 27, 2022

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Reviewed on Mar 31, 2020

Delivery and explanation was very clear. Happy for joining in coursera to enhance my knowledge.

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.

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