Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2025 03:53:23 -0400 Subject: SE463 F25: 1st class meeting is Thursday and NO Tutorial Friday Bcc: se463st, se463tas Hi All in SE463 Fall 2025; You are receiving this message because you are registered or are a TA this term for SE463. Welcome aboard. I will be using e-mail, the course Outline at , the course Website at , and not Learn or Piazza, to communicate with you. The first class meeting is on Thursday 4 September, at 8:30am in MC 2054. I will not be there, as I am attending a conference on the subject of the course. Instead, Prof. Victoria Sakhnini will run a video of my lecture and will be there to pause the video to answer your questions as well as she can. If after all this, you still have questions, just ask me by e-mail, e.g., by replying to THIS message :-). This first lecture is IMPORTANT. It sets the tone for the whole term. I will start in person Tuesday 9 September at 8:30am sharp, assuming that you know what happened on the previous Thursday! Please do not miss this first lecture, e.g., because you know that I won't be there! Thanks. The course Outline at is published, and barring corrections, should be stable for the term. The course Website at is correct up to and including the first class session. It will be updated to reflect the lectures as the term progresses. FYI: There is NO tutorial on Friday 5 September. Typically, there will be a tutorial on the Friday after a deliverable is due to talk about what we were expecting and problems that we noticed in your (plural) deliverables. In fact, the table with the deliverables' due dates at the course Website shows also the date of the tutorial about each deliverable. Also, occasionally, I will use Friday totorial slots to go through examples of the ideas presented in the lectures. Looking forward to seeing y'all in person next Tuesday morning. I will always start on time, at 8:30. So please be on time. Hasta Martes. Dan =============================================================================== Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2025 20:46:37 -0400 Subject: SE463 F25: Update to "Self Registration of Groups and Deposit of Abstract" deliverable. Bcc: se463st, se463tas Hi All in SE463 Fall 2025; This is an update of the original "Self Registration of Groups and Deposit of Abstract" deliverable. Details INCLUDING a pointer to the original deliverable descripion can be found at . Please go there after readying this. I learned how to make drop boxes for submission of deliverables. So we will not be needing the e-mail submission of deliverables. I will update all deliverable specifications soon. Hurray! If you meet the conditions of the original in which your N is between 1 and 30, inclusive and you have self registered at the SE490 Learn site, then you are officially done and do not have to do any more. HOWEVER, it is to YOUR benefit to do the additional steps in this revised description, namely that of (1) self-registering your group ALSO as Specification Group N at the SE463 Learn site and (2) submitting your abstract to the Deliverable 0 drop box associated with Specification Group N. The reason it's to YOUR benefit is that we will use the SE463 Learn site registrations and abstracts to allow each TA to bid on groups that E believes that E has the expertise to advise well. If your abstract is not there, where it is easily examined by the TAs, we will assign your group to a random TA. Likewise, if you meet the conditions of the original in which your N is between 31 and 40, inclusive, and you have self registered as Specification Group N at the SE463 Learn site and have e-mailed your abstract, you are officially done and do not have to do any more. It will greatly simplify things if you would submit your abstract again to the Deliverable 0 drop box associated with Specification Group N. Please do these additional steps by 5:00pm Wednesday 10 September so that we can start the TA assignment process ASAP. Thank you for your cooperation. Hasta Manana. Dan =============================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2025 13:01:54 -0400 Subject: SE463 F25: About the e-mail you will get very soon Bcc: se463st, se463tas Hi All in SE463 Fall 2025; You will receive by the end of the day, e-mail from me describing your team/group. It will have 2 more lines than the number of messages, and it will look like this: Team/Group 1 TA givenNameOfTA,familyNameOfTA,TAemailAddr@uwaterloo.ca list of e-mail addresses of TA and team/group members to use to send this e-mail one .csv file row for each team member whose first field is the T/G number The first line gives your T/G number and then gives the name and e-mail address of the T/G's TA. Contact em if E has not already done so. The second line is the list of e-mail addresses that I used to send the message about your T/G. You can use it whenever you need to e-mail everyone in the T/G. Enjoy Dan =============================================================================== Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2025 15:33:03 -0400 Subject: SE463 F25: No class tomorrow Bcc: se463st, se463tas Hi All in SE463 Fall 2025; Reminder: no class tomorrow There is a class Thursday and a tutorial on Friday Dan =============================================================================== Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2025 15:07:49 -0400 Subject: SE463 F25: This coming week Bcc: se463st, se463tas Hi All in SE463 Fall 2025; This coming Tuesday, the last in September, I will pressent two case studies, one about poor requirements engineering for the remodeling of a kitchen, and the other about good requirements engineering for a substantial piece of interactive software. There is no class on Thursday. But, there is a tutorial on Friday, at which we will discuss your Deliverables 1. The course Website is up to date through Thursday this coming week. I will not add to the "Discuss Deliverable 1" until AFTER the tutorial :-). Hasta Martes. Dan =============================================================================== Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2025 16:36:45 -0400 Subject: SE463 F25: Flexibility on Due Date for Deliverable 3 Bcc: se463st, se463tas Hi All in SE463 Fall 2025; One of you has informed me that many of you have midterms this week, and preparing for them has made doing D3 well by its due date, Friday 24 October by 5:00pm, difficult. He has asked for an extension. The difficulties are that 1. D4, which depends on having good D1, D2, and D3, is due on 14 November to give time for feedback to allow turning in D5, which depends on D1, D2, D3, and D4. Delaying D3's due date shortens the time available between D3 and D4. Delaying D4's due date shortens the time available between D4 and D5. D5's due date is at the end of the term and cannot be delayed. [I see now that there is a typo at https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~se463/#DueDates, in the row for D4. It says "Friday 4 November by 5:00pm". There is no such date. 4 November is Wednesday, but 14 November is Friday. Moreover, https://outline.uwaterloo.ca/viewer/view/nrdh3x gives for Deliverable 4 a due date of Friday, 14 November. I corrected "Friday 4 November by 5:00pm" to "Friday 14 November by 5:00pm".] 2. some groups have already turned in their D3s, having budgeted their time to allow doing so. They are entitled to fast feedback on their D3s. So here's what I have decided. D3 is still due on Friday 24 October by 5:00pm. However, the lateness penalty will be applied as if D3 were due on Wednesday 29 October by 5:00pm. That is, Thursday 30 October until 4:59pm is only 1 day late. The due dates for also D4 and D5 are unchanged. If you have submitted D3 by Friday 24 October by 5:00pm, you will get the TA's fast turn around time for which they have budgeted their time. If you submit any time after Friday 24 October by 5:00pm, you will still get feedback, but it will not be as fast. The TA will fit marking your D3 into er busy schedule as well as E can, possibly cutting more into the time you have to do D4 with full feedback. No matter what, you are required to take all feedback you get on D3, which might be on D0, D1, and D2 as well, into account in doing your D4. So you have to balance the tradeoffs. Good luck on your midterms. Dan =============================================================================== Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2025 10:00:59 -0400 Subject: SE463 F25: Very low attendance at class Bcc: se463st, se463tas Cc: se-director@uwaterloo.ca Hi All in SE463 Fall 2025; Today, Tuesday 28 October 2025, I started the planned lecture, whose slides are at "28 October" in the table at , promptly at 8:30am. However, no student had shown up. So, I lectured to an empty room. By 8:35, still no one had shown up. So I started shutting down, prepared that if anyone were to show up, I would continue the lecture from where I had gotten by 8:35. By 8:37, the shutdown was complete, and I had written a note on the whiteboard, saying that because no one came, I left. Nevertheless, I will act, in terms of lesson planning and exam preparation, as though I delivered all that was planned for the lecture and that we had the discussions that I had planned. I have too many things to do, including for this class, to waste my time waiting for people who might not even show up. I know that many of you do not like 8:30am classes, and in any case, they are difficult to get up for. I don't like them either, even though I am an early bird, because I know that an 8:30 class suffers from low attendance. However, originally, this class was scheduled for later in the day. I agreed to move it back to 8:30 in order to allow a number of you to take electives that were scheduled at the original time of this class. No matter what, the class is scheduled to start at 8:30, and I must finish by 9:50. From now on, if by 8:30, or 10:30 for a tutorial, there is no one present, I will leave, and will act as though I delivered all that was planned for the lecture, or tutorial, and that we had the discussions that I had planned. All this material will, of course, be at the course Website. If anyone has a better idea of how to deal with this situation, please do suggest it. If you are reluctant to approach me directly, please send the suggestion to Prof. Sakhnini, the SE Director, at , with a request to forward your suggestion to me without your name. Dan =============================================================================== =============================================================================== =============================================================================== =============================================================================== =============================================================================== =============================================================================== =============================================================================== =============================================================================== =============================================================================== ===============================================================================