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Thought Provokers

1 .
Consider our start-up company that is 100% committed to leveraging innovative technologies as a business growth facilitator. Describe how it can best use software security engineering to create products or services that can generate business. Give precise examples and explain how the start-up would be able to scale the resulting business (i.e., keep sustaining the cost of doing business while increasing its number of customers).
2 .
In the health-care industry, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) mandates that electronic billing and the sharing of client information cannot be done without proper software support. Software plays a crucial role here because it enables electronic communication, and it lowers expenses in comparison to information exchange in traditional paper form. Other than health care, what are other industry examples that have changed drastically in the past decade as a result of applying software as a part of the solutions they offer? Note that the automotive industry was already mentioned in the chapter.
3 .
Virtual reality is a technology that has gotten a lot of attention recently. With companies like Microsoft promoting Mixed Reality and Meta (the company previously known as Facebook) promoting their Metaverse, VR has big companies behind it. Virtual reality, however, has been promoted in the past by game companies such as Nintendo but ended up fading away. Will virtual reality fade away again? What will make virtual reality a success? What impact do software engineers have on its success?
4 .
As the project leader for the software engineering of the new features of next year’s car model, you have been tasked to deliver the lane departure system, additional navigational features on the dashboard computer screen, and a heads-up display system that shows the speed and any warnings displayed onto the windshield. When the product was demoed, the user of the system indicates that they also want to include navigational aids from the navigational system onto the windshield heads-up display. When the navigation system is providing directions, the heads-display on the windshield should show an arrow when getting close to a turn. This functionality was not a part of the original requirements, but rather is a change to the scope of the project. What do you do? What impact will this have on the process and SDLC models being used for the project? Further imagine the new functionality is critical for safety and could potentially prevent accidents. Would your approach change?
5 .
Consider our start-up company that is 100% committed to leveraging innovative technologies as a business growth facilitator. Describe how it can best use software process model selection and refinement to create products or services that can generate business. Give precise examples and explain how the start-up would be able to scale the resulting business (i.e., keep sustaining the cost of doing business while increasing its number of customers)?
6 .
Consider our start-up company that is 100% committed to leveraging innovative technologies as a business growth facilitator. Describe how it can best use the open world software approach to create products or services that can generate business. Give precise examples and explain how the start-up would be able to scale the resulting business (i.e., keep sustaining the cost of doing business while increasing its number of customers).
7 .
It is common for software engineers to help determine requirements for a project. What are potential issues that can arise from having software engineers make decisions on requirements?
8 .
What are the ramifications of releasing software that has issues? How could this impact customers? How could it impact the software engineers who worked on the project? Consider the features discussed at the beginning of this chapter for software in the automotive industry. What would the impact be of errors in software for features such as lane departure system, cruise control, navigation, or augmented heads-up displays?
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