CS401 Final Exam Topics

CS401 Final Exam Topics

The CS401 final exam is open book and open notes. You are also welcome to bring a computer. However, they are not open-neighbor! Be prepared for short-answer questions and creating or analyzing software documents or code. The topics that will be covered are listed below, which focus on the second half of the course:

Project Management

Earned Value Analysis on a project schedule (e.g. calculate PV, SPI, CV, etc. AND know what these mean)
Work breakdown structure
How to estimate the size/time required for a project
Understand a PERT diagram that illustrates dependencies in a project
- Concept of earliest start time and slack time
Understand a Gantt diagram
Components of a software project management plan
Tasks involved for the project manager

People and Team Structure

Communication cost as a function of team size
Team models

Hierachical
Business
Matrix
Chief Programmer
SWAT
Open Structured
Search and Rescue
Skunkworks
Professional Athletic Team

Motivating factors for developers
Characteristics of high performing teams
Common causes of team failure

User Interface Design

Evaluate a user interface using heuristic design and interface principles:

Simple and natural dialog

Speak the user's language

Minimize user's memory load

Be consistent

Provide feedback

Provide clearly marked exits

Provide shortcuts

Deal with errors in a positive manner

Provide help

CRAP - Guidelines for design layout

Representations and visualizing information

Design of everyday things

affordances

causality

visible constraints

mapping

population stereotypes

conceptual models

Design

Common architectural styles with pro's and con's
- Main with Subroutines and Shared data, Data abstraction, Implicit invocation, Repository (blackboard), Layers of abstraction, Model-view-controller
Design considerations
- Abstraction
  - Procedural vs. Data Abstraction
- Modularity
  - Levels of cohesion
  - Types of coupling
  - Desire high cohesion, loose coupling
- Information Hiding
- Complexity
  - Intra-Modular; e.g. size/structure.
    - Halstead's Software Science, McCabe's Cyclomatic complexity.
  - Inter-Modular
- System Structure : refers to Inter-Modular organization
  - graph analysis; tree optimal

Patterns

Know the following patterns, be able to identify or use or select the appropriate pattern for a problem
Adapter
Bridge
Facade
Strategy
MVC
Command
Proxy
Observer

UML

Be able to interpret or create UML diagrams for:
- Use cases
- Class diagram
- Sequence
- Activity
- State chart

Guest Lecture

Can't think of a good question to ask, so nothing here

Ethics

ACM/IEEE Code of Ethics

Software Project

There may be a question regarding your group project!