SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

QUESTION BANK WITH ANSWERS (2M)

UNIT-1

1. What are the phases in software development life cycle?

A. The software development life cycle is essential to develop a software product. There are six
different phases in software development life cycle. They are 1.Feasibility study 2.Requirement
analysis and specification 3.Design 4.Coding and unit testing 5.Integration and system testing
7.Mainteneance.

2. Explain feasibility study.

A. The feasibility study activity involves the analysis of the problem and collection of all
relevant information relating to the product such as the different data items which would be input
to the system, the processing required to be carried out on the data, the output data required to be
produced by the system.

3.What are the goals of design phase?

A. The goal of the design phase is to transform the requirements specified in the SRS document
into a structure that is suitable for implementation in some programming language.

4. What do you understand about prototyping model?

A. The prototyping model suggests that before carrying out the development of the actual
software, a working prototype of the system should be built. A prototype is a toy
implementation of the system. A prototype usually exhibits limited functional capabilities, low
reliability, and inefficient performance compared to the actual software.

5. What does the function point metric is useful in software project size estimation?

A. Function point metric was proposed by Albrecht in 1983. The conceptual idea underlying the
function point metric is that the size of a software product is directly dependent on the number of
different functions or features it supports.

6. Explain basic COCOMO model with expressions.

A. The basic COCOMO model gives an approximate estimate of the project parameters. The
basic COCOMO estimation model is given by the following expression.

Effort= a1 x (KLOC)a2 Per Month

Tdev= b1 x (Effort)b2 months

7. Briefly outline about Halstead’s Software Science.

A. Halstead’s Software Science is an analytical technique to measure size, development effort,

and development cost of software product. Halstead used a few primitive program parameters
for develop the expressions for the overall program length, potential minimum volume, actual
volume, language level, effort, and development time.

8. Define Work Breakdown Structure.

A. The Work Breakdown Structure is used to decompose a given task set recursively into small
activities. WBS provides a notation for representing the major tasks needed to be carried out in
order to solve a problem.

9. Explain briefly about Gantt and PERT charts.

A. Gantt charts are mainly used to allocate resources to activities. The resources allocated to
activities include staff, hardware and software. Gantt charts are useful for resource planning. It
is a special type of bar chart where each bar represents an activity.

PERT charts consists of a network of boxes and arrows. The boxes represent activities
and the arrows represent task dependencies. PERT char represents the statistical variations in the
project estimates assuming a normal distribution.

10. What is risk? Explain risk management activities.

A. A risk is any anticipated unfavorable event or circumstance that can occur while a project is
underway. If a risk becomes true, it can hamper the successful and timely completion of a
project. There are three essential activities of risk management: risk identification, risk
assessment, and risk containment.

UNIT-2

1.Explain the three important characteristics of software.

A. The three important characteristics of software are: 1. Software is developed or engineered, it

is not manufactured in the classical sense 2. The software doesn’t wear out. 3.Most software
continues to be custom built.

2. What is a myth? What are the different types of myths in software engineering?

A. Software myths propagated misinformation and confusion. Software myths has a number of
attributes that made them insidious; for instance, they appeared to be reasonable statements of
fact, they had an intuitive feeling. There are three software myths, the are: 1. Management myth
2.Customer myth and 3.Practioner’s myth.
3. What do you understand by SRS document?

A. The Software Requirement Specification document usually contains all the user requirements
in an informal form. Writing the SRS document is toughest. The reason behind in SRS
document is expected to cater to the needs of a wide variety of audience.

4. Differentiate decision table and decision tree.

A. A decision table shows the decision making logic and the corresponding actions taken in a
tabular or matrix form. The Upper rows of the table specifies the variables or conditions to be
evaluated and the lower rows specify the actions to be taken when an evaluation test is satisfied.

The decision tree gives a graphic view of the processing logic involved in decision
making and the corresponding actions taken. Decision table specify which variables are to be
tested, and based on this what actions is to be taken depending upon the outcome of the decision
making logic.

5. What do you know about the formal system development techniques?

A. The formal technique is a mathematical method used to specify hardware and/or a software
system. The mathematical basis of formal method is provided by its specification language
consists of two sets of syntactic and semantic, and a relation sat between them.

6. Define axiomatic specification.

A. In axiomatic specification of a system, the first order logic is used to write the pre and post
conditions in order to specify the operations of the system in the form of axioms. The pre-
conditions basically capture the conditions that must be satisfied before an operation can be
successfully invoked.

7. Explain the unique nature webapps.

A. Webapps have evolved into sophisticated computing tools that not only provide stand-alone
function to the end user, but also have been integrated with corporate databases and business
applications due to the development of Hyper Text Markup Language(HTML), Java, Extensible
Markup Language (XML), etc.

8. Explain the algebraic specification technique.

A. In the algebraic specification technique, an object class or type is specified in terms of

relationships existing between the operations defined on that type. It was first brought into
prominence by Guttag in the specification of abstract data types. Various notations of algebraic
specifications have evolved, including those based on OBJ and Larch languages.

9. What do you understand by traceability?

A. Traceability means that it would be possible to tell which design component corresponds to
which requirement, which code corresponds to which design component, and which test case
corresponds to which requirement, etc.

10. What are the characteristics of good SRS document?

A. The skill of writing a good SRS document usually comes from the experience gained from
writing similar documents for many problems. However, the analyst should aware of the
desirable qualities that every good SRS document should possess. Some of the good SRS
document qualities are: concise, structured, black-box view, conceptual integrity, response to
undesired events and verifiable.

UNIT-3

1. What do you understand by good software design?

A. The definition of a good software design can vary depending on the application for which it is
being designed. For example, the memory size used up by a program may be an important issue
to characterize a good solution for embedded software development.

2. Define modularity.

A. Decomposition of a problem into modules facilitates the design by taking advantage of the
divide and conquer principle. The modularity reduces the complexity of the design solution
greatly.

3. Explain the term cohesion.

A. Cohesion is a measure of the functional strength of a module; where as the coupling between
two modules is a measure of the degree of independence or interaction between the two modules.

4. Explain the term coupling.

A. The coupling between two modules indicates the degree of interdependence between them.
Intuitively, if two modules interchange large amounts of data, then they are highly
interdependent. The degree of coupling between two modules depends on their interface
complexity.

5. Explain briefly about DFDs that are useful in software design.

A. The DFD (bubble chart) is a simple graphical formalism that can be used to represent a
system in terms of the input data to the system, various processing carried out on these data, and
the output data is generated by the system.

6. Explain data dictionary.

A. A data dictionary lists all data items appearing in the DFD model of a system. The data items
listed include all data flows and the contents of all data stores appearing on all the DFDs in the
DFD model of a system.

7. Explain in brief multiple inheritance.

A. Multiple inheritance is a mechanism by which a subclass can inherit attributes and methods
from more than one base class. Multiple inheritance is represented by arrows drawn from the
subclass to each of the base classes.

8. What do you understand about state chart diagram?

A. A state chart diagram is normally used to model how the state of an object changes in its
lifetime. These diagrams are good at describing how the behavior of an object changes across
several use-case executions. State chart diagrams are based on the finite state machine
formalism (FSM).

9. What are the classifications of user interfaces?

A. The user interfaces can be classified into three categories: command-language-based

interfaces, menu-based interfaces, and direct-manipulation interfaces.

10.What you know about visual programming.

A. The visual programming is the drag and drop style of program development. In this style of
user interface development, a number of visual objects representing the GUI components are
provided by the programming environment.

UNIT-4

1. Mention any two coding standards.

A. (1) A coding standard gives a uniform appearance to the codes written by different engineers.
(2) It provides sound understanding of the code and encourages good programming practices.

2. What are the main objectives of code walk-through?

A. The main objectives of the code walk-through are to discover the algorithmic and logical
errors in the code. The members note down their findings to discuss these in a walk-through
meeting where the coder of the module is also present.

3. State any two purposes of good software documentation.

A. (1) Good documentation enhance understandability and maintainability of a software product
and they reduce the effort and time required for maintenance. (2) Good documentation helps the
manager in effectively tracking the progress of the project.

4. What do you know about the test case triplets?

A. The test case triplets are [I,S,O], where I is the data input to the system, S is the state of the
system at which the data is input, and O is the expected output of the system.

5. Define control flow graph.

A. Control Flow Graph describes the sequence in which the different instructions of a program
get executed. In other words, a control flow graph describes how the control flows through the
program. In order to draw the control flow graph of a program, we need to fisrt number all the
state of a program.

6. Explain briefly about program slicing.

A. This technique is equivalent to backtracking. However, the search space is reduced by

defining by slices. A slice of a program for a particular variable at a particular statement is the
set of source lines preceding the statement that can influence the value of that variable.

7. Define big-bang integration testing.

A. It is the simplest integration testing approach, where all the modules making up a system are
integrated in a single step. In simple words, all the modules of the system are simply put
together and tested.

8. What do you understand about regression testing?

A. This type of testing required when the system being tested in an upgradation of an already
existing system to fix some bugs or enhance functionality, performance, etc.

9. Explain briefly about user interface testing.

A. The testing of the user interface to ensure that it follows accepted user interface standards and
meet the requirements defined for it. Often referred to as graphical user interface testing.

10. What is system testing and mention its types?

A. System tests are designed to validate a fully developed system to assure that it meets its
requirements. There are essentially three main kinds of system testing: Alpha testing, Beta
testing, and Acceptance testing.
 UNIT-5

1. Explain statistical testing.

A. Statistical testing is a process whose objective is to determine the reliability of the product
rather than discovering errors. The test cases designed for statistical testing have an entirely
different objective from that of conventional testing.

2. Mention any two quality system activities.

A. The quality system activities encompass: (a) auditing of the project and review of the quality
system. (b) development of standards, procedures, and guidelines, etc.

3. What do you understand by Total Quality Management?

A. The Total Quality Management advocates that the process followed by an organization must
be continuously improved through process measurements. TQM goes a step further than quality
assurance and aims at continuous process improvement.

4. Explain SEICMM.

A. The Software Engineering Institute Capability Maturity Model helped organizations to

improve the quality of the software they develop and therefore adoption of SEICMM model has
significant business benefits.

5. What do you know about Six Sigma?

A. The purpose of six sigma is to improve processes to do things better, faster, and at lower cost.
It can be used to improve every facet of business, from production to human resources, to order
entry to technical support.

6. Explain briefly about CASE.

A. CASE stands for Computer Aided Software Engineering. CASE tools promise reduction in
software development and maintenance costs. CASE tools help develop better quality products
more efficiently.

7. Explain software reverse engineering.

A. Software Reverse Engineering is the process of recovering the design and the requirements
specification of a product from an analysis of its code. The purpose of reverse engineering to
facilitate maintenance work by improving the understandability of a system and to produce the
necessary documents for a legacy system.

8.What is known by Personal Software Process?

A. Personal Software Process is a scaled down version of the industrial software process. PSP is
useful for individual use. PSP is a framework that helps engineers to measure and improve the
way they work. It helps in developing personal skills and methods by estimating and planning.

9. What are the benefits of ISO-9000 certification?

A. (1) Confidence of customers in an organization increases when the organization qualifies for
ISO certification. This is especially true in the international market. (2) ISO-9000 requires a
well-documented software production process to be in place. A well-documented software
production process contributes to repeatable and higher quality of the developed software.

10. Explain ROCOF & POFOD.

A. ROCOF stands for Rate of Occurrence of Failure. It measures the frequency of occurrence of
unexpected behavior/failures. POFOD stands for Probability of Failure on Demand. It measures
the likelihood of the system failing when a service request is made.

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