Course pages 2014–15

Software Engineering

Here are the slides; printed copies will be distributed at the first lecture. The lecture on October 28th will be a guest lecture by Robert Brady of Brady plc (slides).

Here is the material on the London Ambulance System disaster; while the case history of the NHS National Programme for IT is here and the inquiry report into the King's Cross fire is here. Here is Fred Brooks' article No Silver Bullet; Nancy Leveson's book on system safety engineering is here; and don't forget the paper by Curtis, Krasner and Iscoe discussed in the last lecture. Chapters 22 and 23 of my Security Engineering textbook were inspired by this course and may be of interest.

Past exam questions are here and here.

Further reading: Harold Thimbleby's paper on safety usability failures in medical devices is here. Fred Brooks' book is available in a 1995 Anniversary Edition with 120 pages of new material. In addition, Dr Brady recommends Pascal Zachary's Show-stopper. Here's an update on Therac – an article from the New York Times on recent fatalities caused by poor radiology systems and software; and here's a video by Harold Thimbleby on the poor safety usability of syringe pumps.. Finally, here's Richard Gabriel's Objects Have Failed, and the piece I recorded with Stephen Fry on Y2K.

Last year’s course materials are still available.