TECHNICAL WRITING AND PRESENTATION

FINAL TERM EXAM (Trial test)

Term 2, Academic Year 2020-2021

Question 1: Match the educational words/terms to their definitions on the right (10’)
1. low-level design a. This describes the major pieces of the application and how they interact (i.e.
Choice of platform, language, data design, database, classes, user interfaces,
external interfaces.
2. high-level design b. This provides more detail about how to build the pieces of the application so that
the programmers can actually implement them
3. monolithic c. Implement bug fixes, additions, enhancements, and future version of the program
4. redundancy d. The process that transforms clear text into coded, unintelligible text for secure
storage or communication
5. encryption e. Product owner, scrum master, team member
6. virtualization f. The development of a virtual version of an IT resource, such as a server, storage,
device, or even operating system
7. devops g. It stands for Development and Operations. It increases an organization's ability to
deliver applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products
at a faster pace than organizations using traditional software development.
8. biometrics h. The software architecture type which describes a single-tiered software
application in which the UI and data access code are combined into a single
program from a single platform
9. roles in scrum i. It refers to the physical characteristics that are unique to the user. This can include
facial recognition, fingerprints, and voice recognition.
10. maintenance j. The process of duplicating critical components or functions of a system in order to
increase the reliability of the system, usually in the form of a backup or fail-safe

Quention 2: Read the abstracts bellow and identify which sentence(s) belong(s) to which group (Aim-
background, Method, Finding, and Conclusion/implication) (20’)
Abstract Aims-background Method Finding Conclusion/
Sentence(s) number Sentence(s) number Sentence(s) number implication
Sentence(s) number
Abstract 1
Abstract 2
Abstract 3
Abstract 4

Abstract 1: Cloud applications monitoring: An industrial study

(1)Modern software systems employ large IT infrastructures hosted in on-premise clouds or using
“rented” cloud resources from specific vendors. (2) The unifying force across any cloud strategy is
incremental product and application improvement against conservation of those resources. (3) This
is where monitoring of cloud applications becomes a key asset. (3) To shed light over the status of
monitoring practices in industry, we study: (a) monitoring practices and tools adoption in industry;
1
(b) size and complexity of industrial monitoring problems; (c) the role of software architecture and
software process with respect to monitoring strategies. (4) We conduct mixed-methods empirical
research featuring interviews and a web survey featuring 140+ practitioners from over 70 different
organizations. (5) Even if the market makes available a significant set of monitoring tools, our
results show a rather unappealing picture of industrial monitoring: (a) industrial decision-makers do
not perceive monitoring as a key asset even though the downtime of their applications correlates
heavily with the level of automation and responsiveness enabled by monitoring; (b) monitoring is
done with crude technology, mostly MySQL querying or similar (e.g., Nagios); finally, (c) incidents
are discovered by clients rather than application owners. (6) We conclude that the road toward the
industrial adoption of cutting-edge monitoring technology is still one of the less travelled,
presumably in connection to the considerable investment required. (7) Furthermore, the lack of
industrial cloud monitoring standards does not help in addressing the proliferation of multiple tool
combinations, with varying effectiveness. (8) Further research should be invested in looking into
and addressing these major concerns.

Structure Aims-background Methods Findings Conclusion/ implications

Sentence Number (e.g
1,2,3..)

Abstract 2: Governance and Management of Green IT: A Multi-Case Study

(1) The changes that are taking place with respect to environmental sensitivity are forcing
organizations to adopt a new approach to this problem. (2) Implementing sustainability initiatives
has become a priority for the social and environmental awareness of organizations that want to stay
ahead of the curve. (3) One of the business areas that has, more than others, proven to be a vital
asset and a potential ally of the environment, is the area of Information Technology (IT). (4)
Through this area, Green IT practices advocate sustainability in and by IT. (5) However,
organizations have a significant handicap in this regard, due to the lack of specific Green IT
standards and frameworks that help them carry out this type of sustainability practices. (6)
Objective: We have developed the “Governance and Management Framework for Green IT”
(GMGIT), which establishes the necessary characteristics to implement Green IT in organizations,
from the point of view of the governance and management of this area. (7) After developing and
validating a first version of this framework, we have performed a set of improvements, obtaining the
GMGIT 2.0, which we want to validate. (8) We have conducted a series of empirical validations at
international level based on case studies, whose characteristics and results are presented in this
study. (9) The results of this multi-case study show an example of the current situation of
organizations in Green IT, as well as the resolution of problems encountered during the validations
conducted with the GMGIT 1.0. (10) The findings obtained demonstrate the usefulness,
applicability, and validity of the framework when implementing, auditing, and improving Green IT
in organizations in a systematic and progressive manner.

Structure Aims-background Methods Findings Conclusion/ implications

Sentence Number (e.g
1,2,3..)

2
Abstract 3: A unified framework for declarative debugging and testing
(1) Debugging is the most challenging and time consuming task in software development. (2)
However, it is not properly integrated in the software development cycle, because the result of so
much effort is not available in further iterations of the cycle, and the debugging process itself does
not benefit from the outcome of other phases such as testing. (3) We propose to integrate debugging
and testing within a single unified framework where each phase generates useful information for the
other and the outcomes of each phase are reused. (4) We consider a declarative debugging setting
that employs tests to automatically entail the validity of some subcomputations, thus decreasing the
time and effort needed to find a bug. (5) Additionally, the debugger stores as new tests the
information collected from the user during the debugging phase. (6)This information becomes part
of the program test suite, and can be used in future debugging sessions, and also as regression tests.
(7) We define a general framework where declarative debugging establishes a bidirectional
collaboration with testing. (8) The new setting preserves the properties of the underlying declarative
debugging framework (weak completeness and soundness) while generating test cases that can be
used later in other debugging sessions or even in other cycles of the software development. (9) The
proposed framework is general enough to be instantiated to very different programming languages:
Erlang (functional), Java (imperative, object-oriented), and SQL (data query); and the experimental
results obtained for Erlang programs validate the effectiveness of the framework. (10) We propose a
general unified framework for debugging and testing that simplifies each phase and maximizes the
reusability of the outcomes in the different phases of the software development cycle, therefore
reducing the overall effort.

Structure Aims-background Methods Findings Conclusion/ implications

Sentence Number (e.g
1,2,3..)

Abstract 4: What skills do IT companies look for in new developers? A study with Stack
Overflow jobs
(1) There is a growing demand for information on how IT companies look for candidates to their
open positions. (2) This paper investigates which hard and soft skills are more required in IT
companies by analyzing the description of 20,000 job opportunities. (3) We applied open card
sorting to perform a high-level analysis on which types of hard skills are more requested. (4)
Further, we manually analyzed the most mentioned soft skills. (5) Programming languages are the
most demanded hard skills. (6) Communication, collaboration, and problem-solving are the most
demanded soft skills. (7) We recommend developers to organize their resum´e according to the
positions they are applying. (8) We also highlight the importance of soft skills, as they appear in
many job opportunities.

Structure Aims-background Methods Findings Conclusion/ implications

Sentence Number (e.g
1,2,3..)
3
Question 3: Fill in the blank with the provided words (1.0/10.00) (10’)

EDUCATION IN TIME OF A PANDEMIC: HOW TO SUPPORT TEACHERS AND STUDENTS?

At the beginning of this month my daughter was still going to (1)_____ and e-learning was still considered
an option for enhancing the quality of teaching and (2)______. We were discussing the need to integrate
digital technologies more heavily into education and the ways to approach it, while at the same time having
a number of discussions on the importance of teacher presence in the classroom, and how technology can get
in the way of interaction with a teacher – interaction that is crucial for the development of higher-order
thinking. Finding the appropriate balance is not (3)______.

Suddenly we were facing the rise of a pandemic on European and (4)_______ level, a pandemic which made
us stay at home. Today, all schools and faculties have been forced to work (5)______ and are desperately
trying to cope with this change. Although we are now talking about moving from face-to-face teaching to
online education, are institutions and teachers fully aware of the difference between emergency remote
teaching and planned and organized online learning?

The current pandemic has not only (6)______ education, but also our work, socialization, everyday life,
economy, and health care… I do not (7)______ that on one day we will be able to simply go back to our
former way of life.  These challenging times have brought change for each of us, and now it is up to us to
see how we can contribute, to be innovative and responsible, and to (8)______ work for a better tomorrow!

So please physically (9)_________ at home, but spiritually be present globally! We at EDEN expect and
look (10)______to your contributions to this quickly changing education landscape.

Global Affected Learning School Forward

Online Think Stay Easy Jointly

Question 4: Underline the erors. Then Rewrite the sentences. (10’)

1. 1024 computers were linked into the ring.

2. Partial compilation gave a 4-fold improvement.
3. The increase was over five per cent.
4. The method requires 2 passes.
5. There were between fourteen and 32 processors in each machine.
6. About 1/3 of the data was noise.
7. There were 14 512-Kb sets.
8. The sizes were 10.34 and 187 Kb, respectively.
9. We have computed the value of x in terms of y and z. z is, in turn, expressed as a
function of another variable.
10. The values are represented as a list of numbers L.

Question 5: (20’) Write a letter of inquiry (about 150 words) to a company asking for information
about either a product/service or Job opportunities.