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This set of Software Engineering Multiple Choice Questions & Answers (MCQs) focuses on Software Engineering Set 1

Q1 | Software Engineering:
  • is a set of rules about developing software products
  • has been around as a discipline since the early 50’s
  • started as a response to the so-called ‘software crisis’ of the late 90’s
  • is an engineering discipline concerned with all the aspects of software production
Q2 | While orientating yourselves to the company’s work practices, you observe that they in fact do not conduct a few tests that they should in order to comply with the relevant safety standard. When you inquire about this from the project manager, he dismisses it saying that those tests are really unnecessary (and takes an unreasonably long time to conduct, as well as being superfluous) and that they have managed with the other tests for so long, without any problems.”
  • you should immediately resign from the company and file a complaint with the relevant standard institution
  • you should do nothing and let the matter slide
  • although you are new to the company, and you hardly know anything about the internal processes and politics, you should insist on the company changing its work practices immediately; failing which you threaten to report the matter
  • since you are new to the company, and you are unfamiliar with the internal processes and politics, you should first find-out more about the issue and its background
Q3 | With regard to Evolutionary development, identify the correct statement.
  • evolutionary development usually comes in two flavors; exploratory development, and throw-away prototyping
  • very large projects are natural candidates for an evolutionary development based approach
  • exploratory development is used in situations where most of the requirements are well understood in advance
  • one of the strong points of evolutionary development is that it facilitates easy project management, through the high volume of documentation it generates
Q4 | The software life cycle can be said to consist of a series of phases. The classical model is referred to as the waterfall model. Which phase may be defined as “The concept is explored and refined, and the client’s requirements are elicited?”
  • requirements
  • specification
  • design
  • implementation
Q5 | Which property of the rapid prototype is not important?
  • the speed with which it can be developed
  • the speed with which it can be modified
  • its ability to determine the client’s real needs
  • the insights that the design team can gain from it, even if they are of the ‘how not to do it’ variety
Q6 | The degree of interaction between two modules is known as
  • cohesion
  • strength
  • inheritance
  • coupling
Q7 | The relationship between a derived class (or subclass) and base class is referred to as
  • association
  • inheritance
  • polymorphism
  • instantiation
Q8 | Myers (1978) identifies seven levels of cohesion. Which level of cohesion may be defined as followed; “the output from one element in the component serves as input for some other element”?
  • communicational cohesion
  • functional cohesion
  • communicational cohesion
  • temporal cohesion
Q9 | If a control switch is passed as an argument this is an example of _______ coupling.
  • content
  • common
  • control
  • stamp
Q10 | Which of the following is a type of abstraction?
  • data
  • procedural
  • iteration
  • all of the above
Q11 | In the classical chief programmer team approach, the team member responsible for maintaining the detailed design and coding is
  • the chief programmer
  • the programming secretary
  • a specialized function that exists outside ‘the team’
  • the individual coder (i.e. programmer)
Q12 | Internal costs include
  • developers salaries
  • managers and support personnel salaries
  • the cost of overheads such as utilities, rent and senior managers
  • materials (such as manuals) and services such as travel
Q13 | Software Science bases its estimation of the size of a product on
  • files (fi), flows (fl) and processes (pr)
  • lines of code (kloc)
  • function points (fp)
  • operands and operators
Q14 | In Intermediate COCOMO the mode that represents complex products is referred to as
  • embedded
  • semidetached
  • organic
  • multiplicative
Q15 | Work that continues throughout the project and does not relate to any specific phase of software development is termed a(n)
  • milestone
  • project function
  • activity
  • task
Q16 | The best way to test the Software Project Management Plan (SPMP) is by
  • prototyping
  • inspection
  • simulation
  • compilation
Q17 | Brooks’ view of the essence of software included
  • people, quality, process and productivity
  • performance, robustness, maintainability and reusability
  • complexity, conformity, changeability and invisibility
  • efficiency, reliability, usability and robustness
Q18 | What is the essence of software engineering?
  • requirements definition, design representation, knowledge capture and quality factors
  • maintaining configurations, organizing teams, channeling creativity and planning resource use
  • time/space tradeoffs, optimizing process, minimizing communication and problem decomposition
  • managing complexity, managing personnel resources, managing time and money and producing useful products
Q19 | Which of the following is a life-cycle concern?
  • testing
  • portability
  • programming
  • planning
Q20 | Which best captures the nature of the quality paradigm?
  • the nature of quality, a process perspective, defect elimination
  • process, product, people, problem
  • measurement, quality control, validation
  • feasibility, requirements, economics, customer’s needs
Q21 | What are the major activities of the spiral model of software engineering?
  • planning, risk analysis, engineering, customer evaluation
  • defining, prototyping, testing, delivery
  • requirements
  • quick design, build prototype, evaluate prototype, refine prototype
Q22 | In choosing a development life-cycle model, one would consider the
  • development group expertise, problem characteristics, user expectations
  • languages, development schedule, competition
  • system context, user population, platforms
  • organizational structure, user tasks, performance criteria
Q23 | What are the factors to be considered when planning a software development effort?
  • performance, problem, product, planning
  • people, problem, product, process
  • people, problem, productivity, performance
  • people, problem, product, portability
Q24 | Views of quality software would not include
  • optimizing price and performance
  • minimizing the execution errors
  • conformance to specification
  • establishing valid requirements
Q25 | Software configuration activities would not include
  • identify change
  • control change
  • ensure improper implementation of change
  • report change to interested parties