CS401 Midterm Exam Topics

The CS401 midterm exam is open book and open notes.  You can use a computer if you like (e.g. to view PDF or PPT files), but aren't allowed to search the web for answers, chat online with others, etc. Be prepared for short-answer questions, creating or analyzing user stories, requirements, designs, or development methodologies. The topics that will be covered are listed below:

Software Lifecycle Models

Fundamental differences between the following models:


• Simple model
• Waterfall
• Throway prototyping
• Evolutionary prototyping
• Agile Development

Agile Development

• Philosphy behind Agile, why proponents believe it is better than Big Design Up Front
• Collecting User Stories
  • Collecting good user stories (INVEST)
  • Estimating time for tasks, idea of NUTS/relative estimation
• Units and planning
• Activities and Documents that go into an Iteration
• Calculating Project Velocity
• Burn-up/down chart
• Planning for the next iteration
• Rationale and challenges behind test-first
  • Importance of test suites
  • Unit tests vs. acceptance tests
  • Writing unit tests
  • Writing acceptance tests
• Refactoring
• Why it is important in Agile

Software Testing (In General)

• Overview of the testing process
  • Component, usability, unit, integration, system testing (acceptance testing, installation testing)
• Static vs. Dynamic testing; profiling
• Components of a software test plan and test document
• Testing Phase vs. Integrated Testing across each phase
• Black vs. White box testing
• Manual test techniques
  • Reading
  • Walkthroughs
  • Inspections
  • Scenario Based Evaluation
  • Correctness Proofs
  • Stepwise Abstraction
• Control flow and data flow coverage
  • You should be able to generate test cases that give the desired coverage
• Fault-based testing
  • Fault seeding
  • Mutation testing
• Integration strategies
• Bottom-up, Top-down, sandwich

Refactoring

• Small code rearrangements to make code easier to maintain and understand
• Common "smells"
• Be prepared to refactor some chunk of code