Overview

Successful software projects require more than just technical expertise. Figuring out what the client wants, collaborating in a team, managing complexity, mitigating risks, staying on time and budget, and determining, under various constraints, when a product is "good enough" to be shipped are equally important topics that often have a significant human component. This course explores these issues broadly and covers the fundamentals of modern software engineering and analysis.

This course focuses on software engineering and analysis. At a high level, the course is organized around five core topics:

A culminating assignment involves making a contribution to an open source project: identifying an issue, understanding the local development process, and then actually fixing a bug or adding a feature, with extra credit awarded if your contribution is merged into the project.

This course is an upper-level CS technical elective for both CS-Eng and CS-LSA. (It does not show up in some versions of the CS-LSA Program Guide, but it does, in fact, count. Students can check their Audits to confirm.) It is not a capstone course or a major design experience course. It focuses on individual mastery of key software engineering concepts. It does not feature a large team project.

The expected workload for this class is "moderate" — one notch harder than UI Design, but two notches easier than Operating Systems.

This course draws inspiration from Carnegie Mellon's Foundations of Software Engineering (15-313) course as well as from the insights of Drs. Prem Devanbu, Christian Kästner, Marouane Kessentini, Kevin Leach, and Claire Le Goues.

Attendance Policies and Participation

This course provides support for:

• Section 1 — 1:30-3:00pm — synchronous, in-person lecture attendance and in-person participation activities
• Section 2 — whenever — asynchronous, remote attendance and remote structured participation activities

With the exception of lecture attendance and participation, all other aspects of the course are identical between 481-001 and 481-002. In particular:

• all sections — access to lecture recordings, access to participation activities from both sections, access to discussion section materials, the same homeworks, the same exams, the same due dates, etc.

If you are registered and enrolled for Section 1 (EECS 481-001, 1:30-3:00pm) you must attend lectures in person synchronously and complete graded in-class in-person participation activities. (Note that we don't grade attendance/participation in the first few lectures, but we still do participation activities.) These activities typically involve writing an answer on notecards that we pass around or completing in-class coding; they include an aspect of (sampled) "checking attendance".

If you are not registered and enrolled for Section 1, such as because you are on the waiting list or are enrolled in Section 2, you cannot complete the in-person participation activities for credit and must complete the remote structured participation activities for credit (uploaded to Gradescope). You can find the activities in a link at the top of this webpage. (Note that we don't grade attendance/participation in the first few lectures, but participation activities are still available, to mirror the opportunities of Section 1 students.)

If you are registered for one section and would like to be in the other, you can switch sections. Switching sections is not handled by the EECS 481 staff.

Some students benefit from in-person instruction: from talking about the material with other students live, from being able to ask questions right in real time, from the structure, and so on. Such students should sign up for, or switch into, Section 1. Other students may benefit from remote, asynchronous instruction: from having the scheduling flexibility to fit in part time jobs, from being able to spend days outside of Ann Arbor for various reasons, from avoiding close proximity to others (e.g., for health or medical reasons), and so on. Such students should sign up for, or switch into, Section 2.

With the exception of lecture attendance and participation, all other aspects of the course are identical across sections. In particular, all students have equal access to lecture recordings, structured participation activities, discussion section materials, the same homeworks, the same exams, the same due dates (except for structured participation assignments, which are only due for 481-002), etc.

"Two Plus Infinite"

To reduce student stress and provide support for individual circumstances, each student may miss two (please read this whole sentence before worrying) graded participation activities (two in person, two remote, or one in person plus one remote) without excuse without penalty, and also infinite graded activities with approved excuses without penalty. You do not need to report or request anything for the first two; these will be applied automatically. Students with approved documentation can miss more activities, but to simplify things for students, you do not even have to explain to us why you are missing the first two. (Note that this applies to participation only and not for any other other course quiz or assignment or exam.)

If you are uncertain about whether your circumstances are an excused absence, email EECS481Staff@gmail.com with your information and documentation. The course staff will review your information and apply any accommodations merited by course policies. Your email will be read by a real human.

Discussion Sections

All discussion sections are in-person (unless otherwise specified). They are not required, do not feature mandatory participation, and do not assess attendance. All discussion section materials are made available online. Recordings of the primary discussion section will be made available to all students, while the rest of discussion sections are turned to in-person office hours.

Waiting List

If you are currently on the waiting list but hope to eventually take this course, you should choose the remote participation option until you're officially enrolled into one of the sections. This means, you should watch the lecture recordings offline and complete the participation check offline. This way, we have your participation record on file and we can give you participation credit should you later be officially added to the course. On the other hand, if you do not complete such participation checks, you will lose their points when you are officially enrolled. Basically, you should pretend you're taking the course remotely and complete all the required work, until you are officially part of the class.

You should also complete other components (such as homeworks) while you're waiting. We do not offer late due dates for late enrollments.

What should I do if I am sick or need other accommodations?

Grading Breakdown

There are two exams during the semester. Both are delivered remotely. The grading breakdown is as follows:

By default, this class has no curve. If we do implement a curve (which has not happened in the last few semesters), we only ever curve up. If we do implement a curve, it would be calculated at the end of the semester (and not on a per-each-assignment basis).

The exams are intentionally given a low weight to reduce student stress and the impact of a "bad day". Similarly, because there is no curve, students are never in competition with each other.

How can I calculate my projected grade?

Homework Assignments

There are six homework assignments for this course. The assignments involve the electronic submission of artifacts. Some (e.g., test cases) are graded automatically and admit immediate feedback. Others (e.g., prose descriptions) are graded manually. For certain assignments it is possible to work as a team.

What happens if a website is unavailable?

Reading and Comprehension

A critical part of software engineering is reading — both code and prose. To encourage you to keep pace with the material, we will assign reading comprehension quizzes. These quizzes may consist of elements such as (1) comprehension questions about any readings, especially those new since the last quiz; (2) questions about the lecture materials; (3) a 4-sentence summary of lecture material; or (4) a random code word shared during a lecture. The goal is to encourage engagement and retention.

For on-line reading comprehension quizzes, you will have a 72 hour span near the associated lecture to begin your reading quiz. Quizzes are announced on Gradescope, typically on Wednesday. Once you begin the quiz, you will typically have 10 minutes to complete it. The quizzes are designed to be completable in 5 minutes, but additional time is given as a blanket accommodation. The quizzes are "open notes" (but are typically constructed to favor completing the reading before starting the quiz).

Software engineering is often more engineering than science: the basic concepts may be easy to grasp, but the trouble is found in the details. Questions such as "which of these methods works best in the real world?" and "what are successful companies actually doing?" are paramount. As a result, many of the readings are experience reports from companies (e.g., Microsoft, Google, etc.) or academic papers (e.g., with human studies). We have structured this course so that there is no expensive textbook and all of the readings are available on-line for free.

Some of the readings are marked optional. Next to each such optional reading is a small "advertisement" for it. The optional readings are not required for any class assignments, but there may be extra credit questions on exams or quizzes that reference them.

Collaboration Reflection

A key part of software engineering is decision-making: deciding when to trust your code, whether to use a tool, or how to divide work with collaborators. To help you reflect on these decisions, you will complete a short Collaboration Reflection after each major assignment. These reflections ask about your use of partners, AI tools, and how you built confidence in your work. Some questions are general (e.g., “How did you decide your code was correct?”), while others are tailored to specific assignments.

You will complete the reflection by editing a plain text file and submitting it to Autograder.io. You may submit as many times as you like before the deadline. Each reflection is reviewed by a separate grading team and does not affect your code or report scores. The goal is to build awareness around your own workflow, judgment, and collaboration habits. Our goal is not to assess correctness.

Because software engineering is a team discipline, understanding how people work together, and with tools, is just as important as writing the code itself. This reflection assignment is one way we make those practices visible and discussable. We encourage honest answers. There is no penalty for using AI or collaboration tools when allowed; what matters is how you use them and what you learned in the process.

Late Assignment Policy

EECS 481 does not feature a generous late policy. Assignments, quizzes or exams turned in late typically receive zero points. (In some extenuating cases you may receive h% off, where h is the number of hours late.)

In other classes, late policies may be more lenient (e.g., students may receive a number of fungible "late days", etc.). EECS 481 is different because scheduling and risk for projects are explicitly topics in this course (they are covered in lecture and in the readings, etc.). Staying on schedule is part of the material for the course, and is thus part of the assessment. If you are working for a company that is shipping software by a particular date and you miss that deadline, your contribution will not be included.

To support students, all of the course materials, assignments and due dates are provided on the first day of class. No due dates are ever shifted to be earlier. You can access the autograder for any assignment as early as the first day of class. The freedom and responsibility rest with you. (For example, if you know that you struggle with deadlines, or if your other classes have exams around a particular point, you may want to "pretend" that an assignment in this class is due earlier than it actually is. If you miss your internal deadline by a bit, you can still make the official deadline. If you are used to courses where there are frequent email updates or calendar reminders, this is a good opportunity to practice setting up your own reminders for future situations in which organizational ones may not be available.)

All course materials submitted for a grade must be turned in by midnight on the last date listed on the course syllabus.

Regrade Policy

Regrade requests for exams, assignments, or written assignments must be received within one week of you receiving your score. All regrade requests should be made via Gradescope if possible (if a request absolutely cannot be made via Gradescope for a certain assignment or exam, please email it privately to the course staff). When we regrade an assignment we will look over it very carefully for correctness: it is possible that after a regrade you will end up with fewer points than before the regrade. Regrades should be treated with caution and used only when the graders have made a clear mistake evaluating your work.

Student Mental Health

Students often experience strained relationships, increased anxiety, alcohol or drug problems, feeling down, difficulty concentrating, family issues, or a lack of motivation. Student mental health concerns are quite common but we don't always talk about them. The University of Michigan is committed to advancing the mental health and well-being of its students. If you or someone you know is feeling overwhelmed, depressed, or in need of support, confidential mental health services are available on campus.

CSE Undergraduate Advising Office Resources

Alongside scheduling advising appointments, regular virtual drop-in advising, and Fall/Winter semester peer advising, the Computer Science and Engineering Undergraduate Advising Office (CSE UAO) provides the following resources:

• Chatbot (available 24/7). An AI-powered assistant for quick answers about CS/DS Programs at UM for:
  • Admissions, Declarations and Graduation
  • Advising and Support Resources
  • Calendars, Deadlines and Policies
  • Courses, Enrollment and Program Requirements, Form Requests
  • Transfers, Credits and Others
• eecs.io. A hub for course information, eecs.io links to:
  • Attendance and course format info
  • Course websites
  • CSE course sorting tool (sort classes by requirement and content area)
  • Program requirement lists
  • Special topics courses
  • Other course resources
• Faculty Chats. Meet with one of our faculty partners in CSE to discuss:
  • Course-specific topics and course exploration
  • CSE department in general
  • Post graduation resources/plans
  • Questions related to your field
  • Research opportunities

Research

Your class work might be used for research purposes. For example, we may use anonymized student assignments to design algorithms or build tools to help programmers. Any student who wishes to opt out can contact the instructor or teaching assistant to do so after final grades have been issued. This has no impact on your grade in any manner.

Students interested in considering undergraduate research should make an appointment to talk about it. I am happy to discuss independent study projects, senior projects, paid research work over the summer, research work for credit, and graduate school.