FIT5171 System validation and verification, quality and standards
Faculty of Information Technology
FIT5171 System validation and verification, quality and standards is a level 5, 6-credit-point, postgraduate unit from the Faculty of Information Technology, offered in 2027 in Semester 1 at Clayton. It needs FIT9131 and FIT9132.
- Credit points
- 6
- Offered in 2027
- Semester 1
- Clayton
- Assessment
- No exam
- 4 tasks
- Workload
- 144 hours
- per semester
Reviews
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Requisites
Before FIT5171
Prerequisites
Pass these before you enrol.
Prohibitions
You can't enrol if you have passed any of these.
After FIT5171
No unit lists FIT5171 as a prerequisite in the 2027 handbook.
Enrolment rules
Prerequisite: For students enrolled in 2770: MAT1830 and FIT2004 Advanced programming in Java; Object-oriented software engineering: UML notation, method and SE process; Basic discrete mathematics: sets, relations, functions, graphs; Project management.
Overview
This unit covers the core software engineering practices used to manage, evaluate, and improve software quality. It introduces validation, verification, testing, defect analysis, quality assurance, and software quality engineering as applied across contemporary software development lifecycles. You learn how to design and justify testing strategies, develop automated tests, use quality evidence such as coverage, metrics, static analysis, and mutation testing, and communicate defects and release risks in complex software systems. The unit also considers modern quality infrastructure, including CI/CD workflows, regression testing, quality gates, and responsible use of AI-assisted testing practices. It introduces selected quality considerations for emerging software systems, including cloud-based and AI-enabled systems.
Offerings in 2027
| Teaching period | Campus | Mode |
|---|---|---|
| First semester | Clayton | On campus |
Assessment
- Applied evidence tasksExercise10%
- A1: Individual test design and automation taskArtefact20%
- A2: Cross-team quality engineering projectProject35%
- A3: Software quality exploration and presentationProject35%
Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.
Learning outcomes
When you finish this unit, you should be able to:
- 1
Explain the importance of quality assurance in software engineering;
- 2
Articulate the role of validation and verification methods in the system development life cycle; key issues in software testing, testing levels and testing techniques;
- 3
Categorise and apply selection and combination of techniques and test related measures;
- 4
Measure, evaluate and analyse software under test using different quality and complexity metrics;
- 5
Develop adequate test cases to help detect software system defects using industry-strength IDEs, unit testing frameworks such as JUnit, code coverage tools such as Cobertura, and other similar products;
- 6
Implement continuous integration (CI) at unit, integration & system testing level using a CI server such as Jenkins to automatically run regression test suites on the system under test.
Workload and teaching
- Applied sessions24 hours
- Seminars24 hours
- Teaching approachActive learning
Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled online and face to face learning activities and independent study. Independent study may include associated reading and preparation for scheduled teaching activities.
Learning resources
Required resources
You are required to install the required software on your own computer to streamline the development and testing process. The required software includes:
- Tools for Software testing such as JUnit 4.x (latest vers)
- Java build management Apache Maven 2.x or 3.x
- The version control system Subversion
- An open-source or commercial Java IDE (Eclipse, NetBeans or IntelliJ IDEA)
Software may be downloaded from:
- http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
- http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/
- http://tortoisesvn.net/downloads
- http://maven.apache.org/download
A free education license for IntelliJ IDEA can be obtained from JetBrains directly.
Recommended resources
- Jorgensen, Paul C. (2013), Software Testing, A Craftsman's Approach , 4th Edition, Auerbach Publications.
- M Pezze and M Young (2007), Software Testing and Analysis , Wiley Publ.
- J F Peters and W Pedrycz (2000), Software Engineering: An Engineering Approach , J Wiley Publ.
- Robert V. Binder (1999), Testing Object-Oriented Systems: Models, Patterns, and Tools , Addison-Wesley.
- David A Sykes John D McGregor (2001), Practical Guide to Testing Object-Oriented Software, Addison-Wesley.
- Daniel J.Mosley, Bruce A. Posey (2002), Just Enough Software Test Automation, Addison-Wesley.
- Jerry Gao, H S Tsao and Ye Wu (2003), Testing and Quality Assurance for Component-based Software , Artech House.
- Matt Staats, Michael W. Whalen, Mats P.E. Heimdahl. Programs, Tests, and Oracles: The Foundations of Testing Revisited . In Proceedings of the 33rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE’11) 2011, pages 391-400. ACM.
- Fraser, G., Wotawa, F., & Ammann, P. E. (2009). Testing with model checkers: a survey . Software Testing, Verification and Reliability, 19 (3), 215-261.
- Majumdar, R., & Sen, K. (2007, May). Hybrid concolic testing . In Software Engineering, 2007. ICSE 2007. 29th International Conference on (pp. 416-426). IEEE.
- Jia, Y., & Harman, M. (2011). An analysis and survey of the development of mutation testing . Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on , 37 (5), 649-678.
- Arcuri, A., Iqbal, M. Z., & Briand, L. (2010). Formal analysis of the effectiveness and predictability of random testing . In Proceedings of the 19th international symposium on Software testing and analysis (pp. 219-230). ACM.
Contacts
- Chief Examiners
- Yongqiang Tian
Common questions
What are the prerequisites for FIT5171?
You need FIT9131 and FIT9132 before you enrol. Enrolment rules also apply.
When is FIT5171 offered?
In 2027, FIT5171 runs in Semester 1 at Clayton.
How much work is FIT5171?
The handbook expects about 144 hours of study across the semester. No students have rated its difficulty yet.
Does FIT5171 have an exam?
No. FIT5171 has 4 assessment tasks and no exam.