PE Software study plan

Map the exam's software engineering scope into a personal checklist of subareas (requirements, design, construction, testing, maintenance, configuration management, quality, process) and rate your current confidence on each from 1 to 5

Define the core vocabulary of software engineering precisely in your own words: software life cycle, verification versus validation, defect versus failure, quality attribute, technical debt

Compare plan-driven and iterative/incremental life cycle models on cost of change, risk exposure, and documentation burden, and state when each is defensible

Set up a spaced-repetition deck and a single notes file so every later week feeds one reviewable artifact

Write good and bad requirement statements for the same feature and label each as functional, non-functional, or constraint

Apply the properties of a verifiable requirement (unambiguous, testable, traceable, feasible, necessary) to critique ten sample statements you write yourself

Distinguish elicitation techniques (interviews, observation, workshops, prototyping) by the risk each one mitigates

Draft a small traceability chain from stakeholder need to requirement to test case for one realistic feature

Explain cohesion and coupling with two original code examples each, and rank five design alternatives by maintainability

Contrast layered, client-server, pipe-and-filter, event-driven, and microservice architectures by their failure modes and operational cost

Apply information hiding and abstraction to refactor one poorly structured module you write for practice

Identify which design decisions are expensive to reverse and justify each classification

Write unit tests for a small module and measure statement and branch coverage, then explain what the coverage number does not prove

Select black-box techniques (equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, decision tables, state transition) for given specifications and derive the test cases

Explain integration strategies (big bang, top-down, bottom-up, sandwich, continuous) by the defects each surfaces earliest

Describe how static analysis, code review, and inspection differ in cost and defect class detected

Trace a defect from symptom to root cause using an original worked example, separating the fault from the failure it produced

Classify maintenance activities as corrective, adaptive, perfective, or preventive for ten realistic change requests you write

Explain the risks of refactoring without tests and the role of regression suites in safe change

Describe configuration management essentials: version control branching, baselines, build reproducibility, and release identification

Define process and product quality metrics and state one decision each metric should and should not drive

Compare process models (waterfall, V-model, spiral, agile Scrum, Kanban) by feedback frequency and change tolerance

Explain estimation approaches (analogy, expert judgment, function points, story points) and the sources of error in each

Describe risk management steps and produce a ranked risk register for a sample project

Explain how requirements, design, construction, and testing artifacts connect through traceability and what breaks when the chain is missing

Analyze a realistic failure scenario (safety-relevant or high-availability system) and identify which engineering practice was absent

Practice justifying a trade-off decision in writing, taking a position and defending it against the strongest counterargument

Review your week 1 confidence ratings and close the weakest two subareas with targeted study

Answer a full set of self-written practice questions across every subarea under timed conditions

Diagnose every missed question by subarea and by error type (knowledge gap, misread, reasoning slip)

Re-derive the ten facts you are least sure of from first principles rather than memorization

Consolidate one final one-page reference sheet you could reconstruct from memory