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4 pages/β‰ˆ1100 words
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2 Sources
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APA
Subject:
Technology
Type:
Case Study
Language:
English (U.S.)
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$ 21.6
Topic:

Structured Design and Reliability Engineering

Case Study Instructions:

Assignment Overview
Modularity is a characteristic of good design. In modular design, the components have definite inputs and outputs, and each component has a clearly stated purpose. In decomposition, we consider the top level to be the most abstract, and components are arranged in level or abstraction or hierarchy. By combining modular components into several levels of abstraction, the system can be observed in different views. The high level components give the opportunity to see the system solution as a whole, hiding lower level details. In functional decomposition, the view shows the major functions the system performs. In object-oriented design, the view illustrates the abstract types and related objects without looking at every instance of the object.
With the advances in modeling techniques, modularity can be performed using different designs in a variety of different ways. For example, the user interface could be designed with use cases (object orientation) and prototyping, and the security design could be modeled using state-transition diagrams. For most projects, the design is created in collaboration with other business analysts and developers. One of the major problems with collaboration is addressing differences in system perception and experiences. To avoid some of these problems, a groupware tool may be utilized. Otherwise, the design will be subject to various walkthroughs and meetings. Company culture, lack of specialization, and user preferences may also cause communication gaps and issues in the design process.
Required Readings
For Module 3, read Conger’s Chapter 8 pages 279 to 310.
Conger, S. (2008). The New Software Engineer. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company [Global Text]. Retrieved from http://dl(dot)dropbox(dot)com/u/31779972/The%20New%20Software%20Engineering.pdf
Pan, J. (1999). Software reliability. Retrieved from http://www(dot)ece(dot)cmu(dot)edu/~koopman/des_s99/sw_reliability/
Sommerville, I. (2011). Software Engineering. 9th ed. Boston, Massachusetts: Adison-Wesley. [Chapter 13- Depending Engineering PPT]
Sommerville, I. (2011). Software Engineering. 9th ed. Boston, Massachusetts: Adison-Wesley. [Chapter 26: Process Improvement PPT]
Case Assignment
After reading the course materials, please write a 3- to 4-page paper answering the following.
Explain how the characteristics of good design contribute to the product quality. For example how do coupling, cohesion, and modularity affect reliability of systems?
Assignment Overview
Modularity is a characteristic of good design. In modular design, the components have definite inputs and outputs, and each component has a clearly stated purpose. In decomposition, we consider the top level to be the most abstract, and components are arranged in level or abstraction or hierarchy. By combining modular components into several levels of abstraction, the system can be observed in different views. The high level components give the opportunity to see the system solution as a whole, hiding lower level details. In functional decomposition, the view shows the major functions the system performs. In object-oriented design, the view illustrates the abstract types and related objects without looking at every instance of the object.
With the advances in modeling techniques, modularity can be performed using different designs in a variety of different ways. For example, the user interface could be designed with use cases (object orientation) and prototyping, and the security design could be modeled using state-transition diagrams. For most projects, the design is created in collaboration with other business analysts and developers. One of the major problems with collaboration is addressing differences in system perception and experiences. To avoid some of these problems, a groupware tool may be utilized. Otherwise, the design will be subject to various walkthroughs and meetings. Company culture, lack of specialization, and user preferences may also cause communication gaps and issues in the design process.
Required Readings
For Module 3, read Conger’s Chapter 8 pages 279 to 310.
Conger, S. (2008). The New Software Engineer. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company [Global Text]. Retrieved from http://dl(dot)dropbox(dot)com/u/31779972/The%20New%20Software%20Engineering.pdf
Pan, J. (1999). Software reliability. Retrieved from http://www(dot)ece(dot)cmu(dot)edu/~koopman/des_s99/sw_reliability/
Sommerville, I. (2011). Software Engineering. 9th ed. Boston, Massachusetts: Adison-Wesley. [Chapter 13- Depending Engineering PPT]
Sommerville, I. (2011). Software Engineering. 9th ed. Boston, Massachusetts: Adison-Wesley. [Chapter 26: Process Improvement PPT]
Case Assignment
After reading the course materials, please write a 3- to 4-page paper answering the following.
Explain how the characteristics of good design contribute to the product quality. For example how do coupling, cohesion, and modularity affect reliability of systems?

Case Study Sample Content Preview:

Structured Design and Reliability Engineering
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It is crucial for scholars and professionals in technology to understand how characteristics of good design promote product quality because it will enable them to practice effectively. This owes to the fact that a design brings together the business needs, customer requirements, and technical considerations even before the product is developed. Further, a design can be examined to identify whether it meets the desired qualities before actual development of the product begins. Therefore, understanding the relationship between the characteristics of different qualities and a good design is important to practitioners of technology. What are some of the characteristics of a good design? It is notable that a good design has several characteristics. However, this paper will focus on information hiding, modularity, coupling, cohesion, and dependability in order to exhaust the discussion on the aforementioned characteristics. It follows that this paper explains how information hiding, modularity, coupling, cohesion, and dependability of good design contribute to the product quality.
Information hiding is a characteristic of a good design that contributes to product quality. Thus, it is imperative to understand the meaning of information hiding because it will help understand how the characteristic contributes to product quality. The term information hiding could be elucidated as a procedure used by programmers to hide data that is otherwise not required to perform a specific function (Conger, 2008). It follows that information hiding is always applied to codes that would otherwise change if implemented wrongly. For example, in a system that applies mathematical formulae to produce results, programmers could choose to hide the formulae from users of the system because intentional or unintentional changing of the formulae (by users of the system) would result in wrong calculations. This implies that information hiding enables engineers to access areas that normal computer users cannot. In short, information hiding contributes to product quality by increasing flexibility, emphasizes communication using controlled interfaces, and reduces the likelihood of errors, or side effects.
Coupling also contributes to product quality. According to Conger (2008), coupling is a measure defining the extent of relationship between different software components or modules. Critical to the discussion is the fact that modules could be independent or dependent where independent. Here, the term independent refers to modules that do not rely on each other while dependent refers to modules that rely on each other in order to function appropriately. The author further asserts that software engineers should minimize coupling to the lowest case possible. How does coupling contribute to product quality? As aforementioned, it is advisable that engineers minimize coupling when developing systems or software. Simply, modules should be independent of each other. It follows that coupling contributes to product quality because it ensures flexibility and reduces complexity in the final product (Conger, 2008). As a result, it provides room for engineers to make future changes when ne...
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