CPSC 480-010 Software Engineering (SE) Fall 2025

Week 3 Class 5 Tue Sep 09 Posted: Sep 09

Announcements:

• Office Hours Extra hour today from 3:15 - 4:15 pm. Reduced hours on Thursday morning due to meeting. Note that I have Office Hours by appointment outside of these times.
• Brightspace & Exercises Uploads of assignments to Brightspace may not be available until the end of class, even when the Class Meeting is posted early.
• Exercise 7: HFSD Chapter 2 p42 User Story Interview I am not sure I announced it, so it will be due with the rest of the exercises for today.
• Team Exercises & Feedback Each team member gets individual feedback on the team exercises. This includes the work the team did as a whole, as well as your individual contributions. Feedback from the previous team exercise often relates to the current team exercise. Therefore, I am requiring you to view your feedback from the last team exercise via the Assignments page. Failure to do so will result in a large penalty to your exercise score. I suggest that the team remind each other about this at the start of the team meeting.

• Action-Oriented Titles

  The primary goal of user stories is to capture a specific need or goal of a user in the context of software development. It's about "what the user wants to do" or "achieve" with the software.

  Benefits of Action-Oriented Titles:

  • Clarity Action-oriented titles make it clear what the expected outcome or behavior of the system should be
  • Focus on Value Emphasizing actions reminds the team to focus on delivering value and functionality rather than just creating artifacts
  • Facilitates Testing It is easier to deriving test cases from action-oriented stories

• User Story Titles and the Number Grammatical Category

  Strongly consider using a title with a singular noun for a user story, instead of a title with a plural noun, because it emphasizes the atomic nature of the action.

  Plural	Singular
  Upload Documents	Upload a Document
  Send Messages	Send a Message
  Add Products to Cart	Add a Product to the Cart
  Register for Events	Register for an Event
  View Notifications	View a Notification
  Search for Jobs	Search for a Job

  In general, user stories with singular titles are going to be easier to implement. There can be exceptions, as "View Notifications" may be simpler than "View a Notification" due to not having to select just one.

  The most important aspect is clarity and understanding. If "Purchase Clothes" effectively communicates the intent without ambiguity and your team finds it more natural, it's also acceptable. The choice between singular and plural should ultimately be guided by what best serves the clarity and focus of the story in your context.

• Development Environment: Git Setup by next class.

Class

• Exercise 9: HFSD Chapter 2 p 47 Cubicle Conversation
• HFSD Chapter 2
• Exercise 10: HFSD Chapter 2 Crossword
• HFSD Chapter 3
• Exercise 11: Team User Stories II

Unless stated otherwise, all exercises are due by 3 pm on Wed Sep 10