Software Engineering and Project Management Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards focusing on serious games, project management methodologies, modern software engineering practices, and testing strategies from the lecture transcript.

Serious Games

Facilitators where activities typical of a software development process are carried out through a simple game.

Progress Poker

A serious game used to evaluate the current state of progress of an alpha under development, most effective for teams of $3$ to $9\text{ people}$.

Chasing the State

A more efficient form of Progress Poker that immediately identifies alphas whose status is not agreed upon and proceeds with Progress Poker specifically for them.

Objective Go

A serious game used to identify which alphas will evolve next, where target states felt to be critical are rotated horizontally by $90^\times$.

Checkpoint Construction

A serious game used to define goals and checkpoints in terms of results rather than actions, involving the roles of Facilitator and Contributor.

Sub-alphas

Detailed alphas that are particular versions or sub-elements of kernel alphas used to describe project progress in greater detail.

Deming Cycle

A continuous improvement procedure divided into four cyclical phases: PLAN (Planning), DO (Execution), CHECK (Verification), and ACT (Action).

Automated Testing

The process of writing and executing scripts to verify software behavior, replacing repetitive manual testing to save time and increase bug-detection reliability.

Project Management

The discipline dealing with organizational processes that aim to manage a project through coordination, organization, communication, planning, and risk management.

Programme

A complex software engineering initiative that consists of many individual projects.

Project

A set of activities executed in a given sequence with precedence, start, and end constraints, typically requiring an effort of at least $30\text{ man-days}$.

Milestones

Moments in a project's life cycle where progress stops to verify the achievement of particular objectives and determine phase transition.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

A tree-structured methodological tool that divides work into activities and sub-activities purely organizationally, without considering time or precedence.

Work Breakdown Elements (WBEs)

The individual nodes that make up a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) tree.

Gantt Diagram

A visual representation of project activities placed in time using coloured bars whose length is proportional to activity duration, displaying precedence and sequence constraints.

Organigram

A hierarchical tree structure representing the organizational structure, roles, and teams involved in executing project management activities.

Backlog

An ordered, prioritised list of work to be done, structured through detail levels such as Items Gathered, Items Prioritized, and Cost-benefit Quantified.

Kanban

A two-dimensional workflow management method formatted in tables, where rows represent tasks and columns represent workflow states.

Ticketing System

Software that records, tracks, and manages reports from users or developers from initial inception to closure across multiple support levels.

Profiler

A software tool designed to inspect resource usage and performance metrics during program execution to detect leaks and inefficiencies.

Log

A generated logbook record of software events, states, or execution actions used to trace program behavior and reproduce errors.

Release Pipeline

A script or program that performs automated build execution, test execution, component packaging, containerization, and server deployment.

CASE (Computer-Aided Software Engineering)

Software applications enabling graphical diagram creation (e.g., UML), automated code generation, reverse engineering, simulation, and documentation generation.

Unified Process (UP)

A flexible project management methodology consisting of four distinct phases: Inception, Elaboration, Construction, and Transition.

Product Metrics

Software metrics derived directly from source code or product artifacts, such as lines of code and cyclomatic complexity.

Product Owner

A Scrum role responsible for maintaining stakeholder contact, defining implementation strategy, and managing the Product Backlog priorities based on value.

Scrum Master

A Scrum role responsible for facilitating the Scrum methodology and initiating continuous process improvement across all Essence Areas of Concern without writing code.

Technical Debt

An unresolved technical issue or suboptimal design choices in software that accumulate and require dedicated resolution in a future Sprint.

Continuous Integration

A software practice where code changes are committed into a repository and automatically built, tested, and analyzed to guarantee constant system stability.

Continuous Delivery

A Continuous Integration workflow where moving tested code releases into production is authorized through human review.

Continuous Deployment

A Continuous Integration workflow where passing automated tests automatically triggers the release pipeline into production without human intervention.

DevOps

An approach integrating software development and operations processes to minimize bug resolution time and maximize deployment frequency.

White Box Testing

Structural testing techniques where test cases and data are derived directly from knowledge of the internal code structure.

Black Box Testing

Functional testing techniques focused strictly on verifying input-output relationships specified in requirements without considering internal code structure.

Refactoring Iterations

Development iterations executed to resolve technical debt by modifying design or code structure without altering external functionality.

Porting

The transfer of a software application from one operating platform to another without making radical changes to its underlying functionality.

Migration

The transfer of software operations to an entirely different system or off-the-shelf application where practically only the original data is preserved.

Drivers

Dummy code modules created for testing that simulate calling modules by invoking the module under test with specific test cases.

Stubs

Dummy code modules created for testing that simulate called modules by returning predefined values to the module under test.

Load Testing

Non-functional testing that measures software performance and response times when operating at its nominal maximum limit.

Overload Testing

Non-functional testing that evaluates software robustness and graceful degradation by pushing the system beyond its nominal operational limits.

Robustness Testing

Testing aimed at verifying that a system handles abnormal operational stress or excessive load without catastrophic failures.

Non-Regression Testing

Testing conducted to verify that recent code modifications or additions have not caused malfunctions in unmodified parts of the system.

Debugging

An activity aimed at identifying the specific faulty code or data causing a known malfunction and correcting it.

Debugger

A development environment tool that provides a controlled environment to inspect runtime execution, observe code behavior, and trace defects.