Software Methodologies (DMKM)
A course taught in English within the European Erasmus Mundus master’s programme Data Mining and Knowledge Management (DMKM), through the POLITEHNICA University of Bucharest, between 2010 and 2012. This page brings together information about the European context of the programme, the course structure, the teaching materials that have been preserved, and a brief memoir note on my trip to Lyon in January 2011.
Key facts
- Course code: S1-C6-UPB
- Official title: Software Methodologies
- Programme: Erasmus Mundus Master in Data Mining and Knowledge Management (DMKM)
- Partner institution: POLITEHNICA University of Bucharest
- Language of instruction: English
- Period in which I taught it: 2010–2012
- Course coordinator: Luca Dan Șerbănați
- Instructor / laboratory: Andrei Vasilățeanu
- Local tutors: Cécile Favre in Lyon, Claudia Marinica in Nantes, David Pergament in Paris
The European context of the DMKM programme
The course was taught within the European Erasmus Mundus master’s programme Data Mining and Knowledge Management, an international programme created by a consortium of universities from several European countries. In this network, the POLITEHNICA University of Bucharest participated as the Romanian partner, alongside universities from France, Italy, and Spain.
DMKM was a two-year programme taught in English, with student mobility among the partner universities. During the first semester, students followed a common core of fundamental courses. Software Methodologies appeared in this framework alongside subjects such as Advanced Databases, Multidimensional Data Analysis, Statistics & Probability, Optimization, and Logic & Knowledge Representation.
In a master’s programme dominated by data mining, knowledge management, and knowledge modelling, my course introduced the broader perspective of software engineering: how systems are built, how methods are selected, how requirements, processes, data, and architectures are modelled, and how development complexity is controlled.
The place of the course in my teaching activity
Software Methodologies belongs to a later stage of my teaching activity, when my interest had shifted from teaching isolated techniques toward a comparative view of the major families of software methodologies. It was not merely a matter of explaining an analysis technique or a modelling language, but of relating processes, notations, intermediate products, quality criteria, and architectural options.
Compared with the course of the same name taught at FILS, the DMKM version had a different context and a more pronounced orientation toward enterprise modelling, business processes, Information Engineering, and the relationship between software and the organization.
Objective of the course
The underlying idea of the course was that serious software development requires method: a process, a notation, clear intermediate products, and quality-control criteria. Methodology is not merely formal decoration, but the instrument through which the problem to be solved is connected to the software system that must be built.
The course sought to show that software development methodologies are historical and engineering responses to the difficulty of building complex systems. For this reason, it comparatively addressed classical methods, data-oriented methodologies, object-oriented methodologies, and service-oriented methodologies.
General course structure
1. Foundations of Software Engineering
The first part introduced the nature of software, its particular features in relation to hardware, the software crisis, project complexity, and the need for a disciplined approach. The concepts of software process, process models, product assurance, management, and process maturity, including CMMI, were presented.
2. Methodologies and process models
The course discussed the general meaning of a software methodology and the difference among process, notation, and method. The principal process models were analysed: waterfall, prototyping, RAD, incremental, spiral, component-based development, and iterative development.
3. Enterprise-Wide Software Methodologies
An important part was devoted to enterprise information systems: enterprise engineering, enterprise modelling, business functions, business processes, business rules, business models, enterprise architecture, and the relationship between business and information systems.
4. Structured Information System Methodologies
The section devoted to structured methodologies addressed the structured life cycle, information-systems analysis and design, SSADM, data-flow diagrams, ER diagrams, state-transition diagrams, the data dictionary, and process specifications.
5. Object-Oriented Software Methodology
The object-oriented component introduced object orientation, business modelling, requirements analysis, domain analysis, software architectures, behavioural modelling, responsibility-assignment patterns, UML, and statecharts.
6. Service-Oriented Software Methodology
The final part extended the discussion toward SOA: defining service-oriented architectures, web services, integration architectures, SOA delivery strategies, and the way in which a development methodology must be adapted to distributed and interoperable systems.
Laboratory work, exercises, and mini-projects
The course was not designed only as a theoretical presentation. It included exercises, periodic assignments, laboratory work, and case studies. The laboratory was taught by Andrei Vasilățeanu, and the practical activity required students to work with models and tools, not merely to memorize the names of methodologies.
The preserved materials reveal a practical structure based on analysis and design examples: Master Enrollment, Airport Check-in, E-Opera, and E-Hotel. These examples could serve as starting points for environment models, behavioural models, diagrams, and mini-projects.
The preserved gradebook for a later edition of the course shows the distribution of students among the Lyon, Nantes, and Paris centres and the assignment of numbered mini-projects. I have not included those data on the public page, because the gradebook contains students’ names and email addresses and should be kept only as an archival document.
Assessment
The assessment scheme combined the final examination, assignments, and practical activity. The final examination accounted for 40%, exercises and laboratory work for 30%, and the case study for 30%. This distribution expressed the intention of the course: assessment was not meant to verify only the conceptual understanding of methodologies, but also the ability to use them in concrete analysis and design situations.
Preserved teaching materials
The Moodle archive of the course preserves a fairly complete image of the way the discipline was organized: syllabus, course materials, presentations, review questions, laboratory files, and examples for mini-projects. To avoid overloading the page, I grouped the materials into several categories.
Course materials and presentations
Laboratory work, questions, and exercises
Examples and mini-projects
Character of the course
Software Methodologies was not a simple catalogue of techniques, but a synthesis course. It sought to bring order to a vast methodological space and to give students criteria for understanding why different methods emerge, what kinds of problems each one addresses, and to what extent the choice of a methodology influences the final product.
In this sense, the course expressed one of my constant convictions: software cannot be built well without method, but neither can it be built well without a critical attitude toward method. A serious university education should not produce mere executors of a recipe, but people capable of understanding and choosing the right instrument for the right problem.
Lyon, January 2011
In January 2011 I went to Lyon for the conclusion of the first semester of the DMKM master’s programme. The meeting was administrative and academic: together with the programme organizers and the other colleagues, we had to discuss the criteria for evaluating and grading the students.
I taught for three years in this master’s programme, but I went to Lyon only in the first year. I did not know the city. The academic meeting nevertheless left me time for a few walks, and the photographs taken then mainly preserve the image of a January Lyon: overcast sky, grey light, cold air, no rain, but with that lingering dampness that makes the city’s stone appear older and heavier.
The city seen during a few free hours
Naturally, I began on the banks of the Saône. Vieux Lyon opened below Fourvière hill, with the church of Saint-Georges close to the water, the red footbridges across the river, and the silhouette of the Notre-Dame de Fourvière Basilica rising above the city. From the bridges, the city seemed divided between two levels: below, the grey water of the Saône, the quays, and the regular façades of the houses; above, the hill, the towers, the basilica, and the metal tower emerging through the winter haze.
I then climbed toward Fourvière through the narrow streets and steep stairs of old Lyon. It was one of those urban ascents in which the city narrows, the walls draw closer, and the perspective opens only from time to time. At the top, from the esplanade near the basilica, Lyon stretched out beneath the mist: reddish roofs, blocks of stone, the thread of the Saône, and beyond it the modern city fading into milky light.
The Notre-Dame de Fourvière Basilica remained in my memory through the contrast between its massive, almost fortified exterior and its interior, heavily decorated with mosaics, stained glass, and gold. In the weak winter light, the façades seemed cold and severe; inside, by contrast, a decorative abundance transformed the space into an almost oriental, solemn, and theatrical composition.
In the evening I descended toward the Presqu’île, in the area of the Hôtel de Ville and Place des Terreaux. There, the artificially illuminated Bartholdi Fountain had an almost fantastic air: straining horses, water frozen in places, and the green and yellow reflections of the evening lights. It was not the bright Lyon of postcards, but a nocturnal, cold, slightly melancholic, yet highly expressive Lyon.
An evening at the Opéra de Lyon
That same evening I also went to the Opéra de Lyon to see Massenet’s Werther, in a production directed by Rolando Villazón, known above all as a tenor. My expectations were high, perhaps too high. Massenet, Goethe, Lyon, a winter evening—all seemed to promise a memorable experience.
Unfortunately, Villazón chose to align himself with that directorial trend, increasingly common in recent decades, which feels the need to modernize opera at any cost: changing the period, the setting, the behaviour of the characters, and sometimes even the meaning of their relationships. In this case, Werther’s naivety was emphasized by the presence on stage of a child, a miniature version of Werther, while the antics of mimes and clowns on the stage became an intrusive distraction. Modernization does not bother me when it sheds new light on the work. Here, however, it seemed to me that the director’s intervention placed itself between me and the music instead of bringing me closer to it.
The performance disappointed me so much that I left during the interval, something that had almost never happened to me. Perhaps more strongly than the performance itself, I retained the image of the two faces of the Opéra de Lyon. The interior did not win me over; quite the contrary. The modern intervention, with its stacked black balconies and the almost technical structure of the hall, seemed cold to me—more interesting as an architectural exercise than as the setting for an evening at the opera. The foyer did preserve the splendour of the old building, with chandeliers, mirrors, and abundant decoration, but the excessive lighting and the contrast with the modernized auditorium intensified the impression of rupture. Perhaps this ambiguity of the place also contributed to my disappointment that evening.
Looking at the photographs now, I realize that this brief stay in Lyon remained linked in my memory to a contrast: on the one hand, the university meeting, with the rules, assessments, and structure of a European master’s programme; on the other, the city crossed in the cold, along the banks of the Saône, on the stairs toward Fourvière, and in the evening between the Hôtel de Ville, Place des Terreaux, and the Opera. It was one of those professional trips in which the administrative part fades, while the city, seen for only a few hours, remains more vivid than the official reason for the journey.