ISYS1118

This course delivers the fundamental concepts of the Software Development Life-Cycle (SDLC) and Methodology frameworks (including those processes in Incremental - Iterative - Agile models). Besides, I was learnt about the Unified Modeling Language (UML) Diagrams. Uppon the end of the course, I am able to understand the scpecifications of the popular development processes (Waterfall, Spiral, Rational Unified Process (RUP), X-Programming, Agile Unified Process (AUP) and Scrum Process). I can also understand the advantages and disadvantages of each process, be able to compare and combine different approaches to propose the most appropriate process considering the underlying technology, the available resources, the duration, the level of risks and the expectations of customers.

About the assessment, there was a big major assignment, in which I was working in a team of 4 students to develop a real-life system, which was the Course Management System. The project required us to review and refine our designs and system functionalities from times to times to ensure that it satisfied the needs of the Product Owner (the tutor). We need to be aware of the current Software Engineering standards and processes. In fact, the process that we were going on was Agile Scrum Process. Also, we needed to consider qualitative aspects including maintainability, extensibility, reusability and robustness in every stage of the SDLC.

About the project: Design and implement a familiar domain dealing with simplified student enrolment and courses management. A GUI was optional. The system should be able to handle the following user activities:

• Program coordinator adding new courses which includes course details such as prerequisites, main topics etc...
• Admin adding new Course Offerings specifying the maximum enrolments allowed.
• Admin assigning a lecturer to a Course Offering in the current semester.
• Students enrolling in a Course Offering subject to meeting prerequisites, student's maximum load, and not exceeding the number of electives.
• Program coordinator granting exemptions based on prior studies.
• Program coordinator granting special permissions that allow students to exceed maximum load.
• Admin and Coordinator viewing past performance of any students.
• Lecturers uploading results to a Course Offering they were assigned in the semester.
• Students viewing the Course Offering they can enrol in.
• All users need to login with username and password in order to use the system.

The project provided some other bonus marks like using Relational Database (we used mySQL), implementation of MVC design pattern and extendsing the system to a web-based system. The Unit Tests are compulsory in every stage of development.

Since that was the first time I was doing a project in a development process and a design pattern, there were some mistakes in the design of project structure, such as:

• Missing a project leader to monitor the progress and report things to the Product Owner.
• Not using a Git repository to control the development. So the team was devided into 2 groups. One group having 3 members developed a system without using a design pattern, and the other having myself worked on a system with MVC pattern and prepared a near complete system (leaving the business logic to be done later by group). Then we had a meeting with Product Owner to (manually) merge the work of 2 groups together.
• Due to the frequent absence of 2 teammates, the communication in the group was not maintained properly.
• Not having a detailed Product Backlog and Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) to keep track of tasks.
• Not using a progress traking tool to control our work (Jira or Trello).

However in the later courses, I have other opportunities to work on real-life projects and development process, so I can improve my knowledge in many aspects of softwsre development.