Software Engineering Assessment 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A risk assessment matrix plots risks by severity and what other dimension?
- Likelihood of occurrence (Correct answer)
- Cost to fix
- Number of stakeholders affected
- Time to detect
Correct answer: Likelihood of occurrence
A risk matrix maps risks on two axes: severity (impact) and likelihood (probability of occurrence).
Question 2: Which software quality characteristic, as defined by ISO/IEC 25010, refers to a system's ability to be modified efficiently?
- Maintainability (Correct answer)
- Reliability
- Portability
- Usability
Correct answer: Maintainability
ISO/IEC 25010 defines maintainability as the degree to which a system can be modified, corrected, or adapted effectively.
Question 3: In a technical debt assessment, which scenario represents 'deliberate' technical debt?
- Choosing a quick implementation now with a plan to refactor later (Correct answer)
- Accidentally using a deprecated API
- A developer unaware of best practices writing poor code
- A bug introduced during a rushed hotfix
Correct answer: Choosing a quick implementation now with a plan to refactor later
Deliberate technical debt is a conscious trade-off where a team knowingly takes a shortcut and plans to address it later.
Question 4: What does the 'F-measure' (F1 score) combine when assessing a classifier or test suite?
- Precision and recall (Correct answer)
- Accuracy and specificity
- Sensitivity and throughput
- Coverage and complexity
Correct answer: Precision and recall
The F1 score is the harmonic mean of precision and recall, balancing both metrics for classification performance.
Question 5: An assessment reveals that a codebase has high afferent coupling. What does this indicate about the affected module?
- Many other modules depend on it (Correct answer)
- It depends on many other modules
- It has high cyclomatic complexity
- It has low cohesion
Correct answer: Many other modules depend on it
Afferent coupling (Ca) measures the number of classes outside a module that depend on it, indicating how 'responsible' it is.
Question 6: During project assessment, velocity in Scrum is best used to predict which of the following?
- How much work a team can complete in future sprints (Correct answer)
- The quality of the code produced
- The number of bugs in the current sprint
- Individual developer productivity
Correct answer: How much work a team can complete in future sprints
Velocity measures story points completed per sprint and is used to forecast future sprint capacity for the team.
Question 7: Which approach to software assessment evaluates the system against documented requirements to determine compliance?
- Requirements traceability analysis (Correct answer)
- Exploratory testing
- Mutation testing
- Heuristic evaluation
Correct answer: Requirements traceability analysis
Requirements traceability analysis maps test cases and outcomes back to specific requirements to confirm coverage and compliance.
Software Engineering Assessment 3
A risk assessment matrix plots risks by severity and what other dimension?