Weblog 11: Why do software projects fail so often?

Why do software projects fail? What can we do to make them succeed? What is the importance of software project management?

Large and complex projects such as construction of highway bridges or construction of aircraft are usually delivered on time and within budget. However, big software projects are often not.

Software projects become to be failure are always caused by human errors. If the analysts have been set up a wrong view of purpose inside the questionnaires and focus with a different points which is out of the target scope. Therefore, if thee are no staff to check all collected data before working on developing the prototype, it would not be contained a period of time for the analysts to re-acquire the required data inside elicitation. “To follow by the wrong data, make unwanted products “is a big mistake and impact to the main factors of causing the software projects become failure..

Another reason would cause the software projects become failure is about the budget control. .If something has been wrong, there are required more period of time and the budgets may not be enough for re-do the project.

To make the projects be succeeded all the time, I think a good of completed time control is very important. If a mistake is caused inside a task during the project period, to redo that task timing would be possible to be double and it seems to be wasted these hours when comparing with the case that all situations are alright.. In opposite, if the project can be finished on time or using less than the predicted timing to finish, the project may have buffer period for the possible of changing the project work progress or taking a rest or flexible the amount of day of works. Also, for other view need to be noticed for making a successful project is to make all the workers involved in the project have a clear insight or well-known what does the project topic is related to and what is the project purpose? Therefore, the workers can follow by a target direction to finish their tasks.

Importance of software project management: With a clear scenario to follow , we can save times on designing what the project to be covered and also summarize the software project purpose to beware of too wide against with the topic of project.

Weblog 10: What is test-driven development?

Test-Driven Development: What do you think? Do a little research and write something about it.

(i)What is the main idea of test-driven development?

The main idea for the test-driven development is to make the code pass in the test cases during implementation.

(ii)What is the goal of test-driven development?

The goal of test-driven development is to achieve rapid feedback and implements the "illustrate the main line" approach to constructing a program. This technique is heavily emphasized in extreme programming.

(iii)How does a test-driven development cycle look like?

The cycle of test-driven development looks like a repeated loop and the cycle involves the below parts:

1. Write the test

It begins with writing a test. In order to write a test, the developer must understand the specification and the requirements clearly. This is accomplished through use cases and user stories. The design document covers all the test scenarios and exception conditions.

2. Write the code

The next step is to make the test pass by writing the code. This step forces the programmer to take the perspective of a client by seeing the code through its interfaces. This is the design driven part of test-driven development. As part of test calibration, your code should fail the test meaningfully the first time around.

3. Run the automated tests

The next step is to run the automated test cases and observe if they pass or fail. If they pass, the programmer can be more confident that the code meets the test cases as written. If there are failures, the code did not meet the test cases..

4. Refactor

The final step is the refactoring step and any code clean-up necessary will occur here. The test cases are then re-run and observed.

5. Repeat

The cycle will then repeat itself and start with either adding additional functionality or fixing any errors.

Weblog 4: oftware Engineering Certification Programs: What Can You Learn from Them?

The field of software engineering lacks established ways to help developing professional’s credentials. IEEE Computer Society’s Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP) Program comes to address these issue and provides a solid path to software engineering certification. CSDP is a qualification to recognize the holder contains the knowledge about software engineering concepts, In my view of CSDP Exam although CSDP has covered nearly 100% of contents which should be noticed in software engineering to test the holders, practical testing is out of the CSDP issues. Therefore, I believe this certificate would be a good document to identify your learning. However, to classify the engineers are well-known the software engineering bases and its industries , I think to add some practical tests inside CSDP schemes are necessary, CSDP can set up some simulated cases for the students to analysis and generate some proposal plan.

Weblog 8 :oftware Design Patterns: How much do you understand?

How much do you get from learning software design patterns? What are design patterns and do you need them? How do you see the benefits of using design patterns? Feel free to share with us what you have got. For my opinion, using design patterns would help to develop programs in an easier way. Especially when converting the concepts into beta version of the prototype’s structural design, design patterns make the programmers clearly classify each parts of the program and do it individually in ordered. There are 5 structural patterns (adapter, bridge, composite, Façade, and proxy patterns), 3 behavioral patterns(observer, strategy, and command patterns) and 2 creational patterns(abstract factory and builder patterns). Those design patterns

Weblog 6: SOFTWARE QUALITY: WHAT MAKES A PROGRAM CODE GOOD?

SOFTWARE QUALITY: WHAT MAKES A PROGRAM CODE GOOD? What do you think about the attributes of good program code? Put your opinion on your weblog and let us know the URL to your post. A good program code should be developed as good readability way for programmers/maintainers. Therefore, when any repair or update is taken for the program, the job could be easy to finish. Also a good program code should be passed tests on different ways (e.g.compatitability,) before release on the market. However, after release to the market, a good after-service package is necessary. If there are any newly versions of that program are released, you should allow the user to get a free update provider to update the program into latest version. Another view I would be concerned is the installation and un-installation step of the program. A good program must be easy to install with several simple steps only [select installed directory->compact type of program to install] and easy to uninstall fully. Especially, a good program should be monitored to ensure the program is fully uninstalled during un-installation. It is because it may cause trouble to affect the performance of operating system if the program register fileor dynamic link layer(*.dll) has been modified during the un-installation step, in some cases, it may make the program cannot be operated normally if re-installing into the same computer in future.

Weblog Topic 5: Stuff that lets agile software developers show off what they believe in

"Born to refactor"~ In software engineering, refactor means modifying source code without changing its external behaviour, and also refactor would not fix bugs ir add new functionality. BORN TO REFACTOR in my explaination, it may means to develop programs in REFACTOR way, without changing its behaviour, but focusing on improve the performance, reliability, readiability of programs. "Will you Pair Me" ~ seems to be descripted the pair programming which means that require pairs of programmers to develop in pairs of work which they divide into equivalent effort to each programmer and the programmers start to work at the same time. "Don't Get Stressed,Write A Test" ~ Before the prototype of the program project is released to be product to sell, it is worried to find bugs in front of the customers. Therefore, a simulate data processing test is necessary to take for ensure there is no bugs occur when the program runs, if bugs/errors was found, the time would be enough to modify them before the release date. "Got Test?" ~ To ensure the program product has been except all the "YAGNI" ~ short for“You Ain't Gonna Need It” is a reminder for programmers that one should never add functionality until it is necessary. The temptation to write code that is not necessary at the moment, but is perceived to be necessary in the future, has some overlooked disadvantages: Delays what the programmer was originally working on. There is a chance that the requirements for the software will change and the functionality will become either different or unneeded. By applying the YAGNI principle, the programmer has not wasted time in adding the redundant functionality and no longer has to waste additional time debugging the code. The code is also less cluttered as a result. "DTST TCPW" stands for “Do The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work”. A state of mind in use by the eXtreme Programming method. Avoid spaghetti code. And so on. "Duplication Is Forbidden" is talking about the copyright , it is protected by federal law in U.S "JsUnit" ~ JsUnit is a Unit Testing framework for client-side (in-browser) JavaScript. It is essentially a port of JUnit to JavaScript. Also included is a platform for automating the execution of tests on multiple browsers and mutiple machines running different OSs. Its development began in January 2001

My Opition on : What is My favourite On UML Tools

Introductio Of Three UML Tools

(1)Poseidon for UML My observation: One of benefits is that the Poseidon for UML allows put all the different UML Diagrams into the same packages after created the specific diagrams. And translate the models information into specific source codes for easier to edit.

(2)Eclipse

My observation: This program is quite hard to install and it loads a bit slowly.

(3)VP-UML(Visual Paradigm) My observation: This program allows users to create UML Diagrams with individual cases. It has a navigation window “Diagram Navigator” for users to view the created diagrams from selection. It can accept to create several diagrams from different cases for each type of diagrams. However, for the community version, it only accepts one case for each type of diagram. VP-UML can convert the UML diagrams into image files and also can generate reports in PDF format or HTML format.

My Views On: What is My faourite?

Briefly comparsion

In My view, I would like to choose “Poseidon for UML” Community Edition rather than the others. Since “Eclipse” and “VP-UML(Visual Paradigm)” also provide free-trial version for community, both are required to download some patch file and compile before using the programs. As I know, the fact that “there is no free lunch in the world” I should accept community free-trial version programs are reasonable to give no privilege to users for the use of all functions provided inside the programs. However, I found that “Poseidon for UML” Community Edition still give a lot of privileges for me as the selling points to attract my attention on it. Although “Poseidon for UML” is also a community edition (free-trial version), many of most frequently used function are provided for the users to use. Also, “Poseidon for UML” can be generated Java codes after a valid UML diagram is succeeded to be created.

Reason why i choose it/them?

I think the most attractive reason is that “Poseidon for UML” Community Edition tolerates users to create a huge numeric UML diagrams for use, while the other two’s community versions can just allow to create one only from each different type of UML diagrams. This make user’s feel economical that save lots of capitals on software development in the commercial market. I would strongly recommend to use it. “VP-UML” is also recommended to use, based on the availability of generating reports in HTML or PDF format , and can convert the UML-Diagram into image format to view. These would be convenience for people to have presentation for the projects.

My own selection

To conclude, if I were the UML developer, I would choose “Poseidon for UML” as my mainly development tool and choose “VP-UML” as my second-development helper tool and also be my middleware when I need to have presentation which to use it to convert the UML diagrams into image graphics and generate reports to introduce the software projects information to customers and purchasers.

My own views on the Software Engineers' abilities required in the Engineering Industry

Software Engineers Is.....

There are 3 of skills I think that software engineers should contain in this engineering industry. Software Engineering is a type of non-directional industry, no fixed standard, no limitation of improvement, is required. Nowadays, competitive is almost related to the amount of capitals. In economic views, “using less capitals to make big money” is a trendy, it also happened in the programming industry. Many companies choose a cheaper with similar abilities development tools rather than expensive one. However, most of cheaper tools with the similar abilities may use different independent programming non-compatible architecture as the development platform.

<1st> As a software engineer, one ability of that should contain is to be a multi-knowledge expert for different tools. For example, we can use JAVA instead of VB(Visual Basic) to create a GUI prototype, JAVA is cheaper and provide better performance one. However, JAVA and VB are written with two independent architectures. So that, every software engineer should be level-up as a multi-languages expert, because your boss would depend on the cost of capital to change the tools for development.

<2nd> Another characteristic for the software engineers must include is the sense of creativity. To be succeeded over other rivals, apart from well knowledge of different programming languages, you have own stylish creativity is also important. To see backward of history in 1995, do you know remember how success Window 95 in the market after this version of WindowOS was built? Before Windown 95 was purchased, there was no such powerful software appeared in the market, one OS which can enhance system without MS-DOS support and use a user-friendly GUI as interface. Nowadays, a GUI prototype becomes the basic core of any newly developed OS .This revolution make users easy to use and give many software engineering companies to make big money. These are all relied to software engineers's creativity.

<3rd> Software engineers also need to know customers’ most updated requirements. There are no such software that customers would fully satisfy with their performance. Customers always want to pay the least cost, and get the most powerful programs, depending on the economic view. For example, HTML apply the basic functions in the web, but being compared with others more powerful internet languages (e.g. JAVA, ASP ,PHP, JSP) which supply more graphical , management effects. Therefore, nowadays HTML is not be popular than before. To know what the customers want, the best way is to question them. So that, software engineers should have a good marketing skill , to set specific target of customers to collect the specific useful information.

<Conclusion> To be concluded, I think software engineers are not just a type of programming machines anymore. They are acting as many roles at the same time. Whatever designer, marketing or sales, software engineers may probably need to take in parts. Those would be new challenges for them, but I believe a good software engineer those issues and turn them to be parts of improvement of the competitor skill to survive in the this industry over others.

FIRST TOPIC

Hi,there!! My visitor!! Here is Brian's Blog Site. This is my first time to write a Weblog for myself. I hope we all enjoy the period studying in OUHK. And also we can enjoy to share our thinking in the blogs. In the first lesson, Steven shows us what the trendy goes on the Internet world. I think it's quite interesting about the point of Weblog can change the world. Does it really affect our living world so deeply? How comes the result if it compares with the traditional BBS or newsgroups? Which one would be the king of tools to control the kingdom of webase infromation? Best wish, BRIAN CHAN

This is the Second Post

Here is the post from http://bcman423.blogspot.com

First Post

第一個post!!!!