ICS 125: Project in Software System Design

Fall Quarter 2003

Architecture and Module Specifications

Due Date

As described in the course syllabus.

Overview

After finalizing your requirements, your team shall develop a design that fully satisfies the requirements for your application. This deliverable will consist of two primary components: a design specification (consisting of a high-level architectural design and module specifications) and an integration test plan.

You may wish to do an object-oriented design and adhere to the Object Modeling Technique. In this case, your design specification should include the following three models: the object model, which consists of object diagrams; the dynamic model, which consists of event traces and state diagrams; and the functional model, which consists of data flow diagrams. The design should describe all system level objects/tasks, operations, the relationships between those objects/tasks, and external interaction with the environment as well as object class specifications that further detail the object design.

In conjunction with this object-oriented design, your team must develop an integration test plan covering the interfaces between specified modules and/or objects. The integration test plan must cover all interactions between modules/objects by applying functional test heuristics (black box) to each module/class interface in the design specification and developing a test plan for each interaction between modules and/or objects.

Your document must specify the correspondence between the requirements specification and your design. You may show this correspondence any way you feel is appropriate (e.g., make notations throughout your document or using a table that cross-references paragraph numbers).

Developing the software design will undoubtedly reveal inadequacies in previous documents. Please note these problems and what was done to solve them.

Don't forget to include your meeting minutes and performance appraisals with your document; refer to the syllabus for the complete check-list of what has to be turned in. As before, make sure that you post your design document and your meeting minutes to your team web page.


Deliverable Objectives/Quality

Keep in mind that key objectives of a design document are to: In addition, keep in mind that a design document should exhibit the following qualities:

Document Contents

Introduction

Expand your introduction to discuss your specific approaches to the design of the system and the organization of this document. This description is essentially just an updated version of the introduction you included in your previous deliverable.

Understanding

Expand the understanding section of your previous document. Make sure to add descriptions of what steps or actions you took to understand each technology studied during this phase. If you make changes to this section, add text describing why the change was necessary, and why it more accurately reflects your new understanding. This section need not be different if your understanding hasn't changed.

Project Plan

This will be an iterative expansion of your previous submission. Expand your project plan to represent how you have accomplished the work so far. Reassess the project risks. Expand your task network or work breakdown structure to include the effort expended to complete this task. Based on the work you have done, revise your estimates on how much your team can accomplish and deliver.

If you make changes, add text describing why the change was necessary or why it will improve the ability of your team to accomplish the work you have proposed.

Design Specification

Integration Test Plan

Includes an integration test plan capable of demonstrating that the design meets the functionality specified in the requirements. Test cases should cover each module/object and module/object interaction specified in the design. You should consider each module/object as a subsystem and apply functional (black box) test heuristics (such as input/output coverage and error/exception coverage) to the parameters identified in each operation in the interface. In addition, you should develop a test case for each module/object interaction.

NOTE: if desired, the test cases can be grouped with the design entity to which they apply, otherwise a cross reference listing of some sort should be provided.

Initial Demonstration Plan

What and how will you demonstrate?

Tracking and Control Mechanisms

Configuration Management: how will your modules/objects be managed?

Requirements Cross Reference: what modules/objects satisfy what requirements?

Modifications to Prior Documents

Requirements
If any requirements changed, were added or deleted, this is the place to make this explicit. Highlight why the requirement was changed/added/deleted and by whom (customer, developer, etc.). Make sure your requirements meet the objectives of completeness, understandability, utility, unambiguity, and consistency. If your requirements have not changed, then this section should be identical to what you submitted earlier.

Glossary

Defines any terms used in the specifications above. This portion of the document may be written as an extension to the glossary submitted with the requirements, or may be a separate document that only defines terms local to the design phase.

Additional Documentation

This section is reserved for any additional documentation developed during this phase of the project. Specifically, if during the course of developing the architecture your understanding of the various technologies involved in the project changed, or you discovered items that were not documented but which are important, include that information here.

Also list here the major background sources that you used during this phase or any that you plan to use during the remainder of the project. This includes references to similar systems and/or procedures.


Design Presentations/Reviews.

See the syllabus for dates.

Each team should prepare a 15 minute presentation, after which we will allow up to 5 minutes of questions.

Prepare your presentation appropriately. Your presentation should include the following: