Study Software Engineering for a Better Life !

Software Engineering Code of Ethics

2006-08-28T17:37:00.000-05:00

Software engineers shall commit themselves to making the analysis, specification, design, development, testing, and maintenance of software a beneficial and respected profession. In accordance with their commitment to the health, safety, and welfare of the public, software engineers shall adhere to the following Principles:

Public: Software engineers shall act consistently with the public interest.
Client and Employer: Software engineers shall act in a manner that is in the best interests of their client and employer consistent with the public interest.
Product: Software engineers shall ensure their products and related modifications meet the highest professional standards possible.
Judgment: Software engineers shall maintain integrity and independence in their professional judgment.
Management: Software engineering managers and leaders shall subscribe to and promote an ethical approach to the management of software development and maintenance.
Profession: Software engineers shall advance the integrity and reputation of the profession consistent with the public interest.
Colleagues: Software engineers shall be fair to and supportive of their colleagues.
Self: Software engineers shall participate in lifelong learning regarding the practice of their profession and shall promote an ethical approach to the practice of the profession.

The Code instructs practitioners about the standards that society expects them to meet, and what their peers strive for and expect of each other.

Ref: Communications of the ACM, Volume 42, Number 10 (1999), Pages 102-108

Principles behind the Agile Manifesto

2006-08-23T11:38:00.000-05:00

Principles behind the Agile Manifesto
We follow these principles:

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customerthrough early and continuous deliveryof valuable software.
Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
Working software is the primary measure of progress.
Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.
The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly

Ref: http://agilemanifesto.org/

Job Interview Tips

2006-05-27T01:50:00.000-05:00

First impression is the key of an interview success. You don't get a second chance to make the first impression impressive.

How Would You Prepare Yourself?

1. Learn about the company, the position and the people. Learn in advance as much as you can about a potential employer's business from their website.

2. Think of how best to communicate. Think about the best ways to describe your experiences and the projects you will present to interest, relate to and influence the people you are going to meet.

3. Prepare your portfolio/presentation materials. Think carefully about showing design work done much earlier in your career. To many potential employers, especially those who are not designers, older work simply looks dated, and this may work against you.

4. Rehearse. Ask your friends, colleagues or others whose judgment you trust to listen to your presentation and to tell you how you can improve. Ask them what they would want to know about people who are interviewing for positions with their companies

5. Get directions and travel specifics. Ask your recruiter for driving or any other travel directions if necessary, even if you will be taking a taxi airport.

Tips for the Interview

6. Be early. Plan to arrive at your appointment 15 to 30 minutes before the scheduled time. Planes and trains can be late and traffic can be unpredictable

7. Use waiting time wisely. If you must wait, use the time wisely by refreshing your memory. Read your resume and the materials the company provides about themselves in the waiting area. Be interested in your surroundings. Don't listen to a discman.

8. Mind your manners. Be nice to everyone, even receptionists and parking lot attendants. Make as many friends as you can throughout the interviewing process. Say "please" and "thank you" more frequently than usual.

9. Set up a "give and take" situation. Establish a balance between talking and listening. Do not try to dominate the conversation. Do not over-explain, pontificate or "lecture" to the people you are interviewing with. Be a sympathetic listener. Ask open-ended questions designed to draw out people so you can learn about them and how you may meet their needs.

10. Be genuine, interested and enthusiastic. Get comfortable with the people you are interviewing with as soon as you can. Be lively and expressive. Never speak in a monotone. Don't be afraid to laugh and smile. Make eye contact continually. If you are interested in the company, ask questions, especially about the position and performance objectives. If you are asked about your salary requirements, give a range, and be sure the information is consistent with what you told the recruiter.

11. Confidential information. Never reveal confidential information about past employers or projects you have worked on.

12. Communicate simply. Always use simple language that is easy to understand. Speak slowly and clearly but in a natural manner to ensure that you are understood. Avoid jargon, trite expressions and cliches.

13. Follow up. Call your recruiter immediately after your meetings while everything is fresh in your mind and give him/her your feedback and impressions. Remember to send "thank you" notes to everyone you met.

Personal Presentation

14. On the morning of the interview:

Take a shower or bath. Use deodorant.
Wash your hair.
Brush your teeth, and use mouthwash, if necessary. Carry mints or breath spray in case you need it before your meeting(s).
Clean your nails.
Use after-shave or fragrance sparingly.
Play uplifting music that makes you feel good.
Exercise if you are nervous.

15. Dress appropriately.

• In most situations, clothing should be neat, natural and not attention grabbing. The focus should be on your mind and work, not your outfit.
• If you are not sure about proper interviewing attire, ask your recruiter or the assistant of the person you are going to meet about the dress code of the company. Unless told otherwise, athletic shoes may not be appropriate for an interview.
• Use jewelry sparingly. Don't wear anything that makes noise.

(Content sources: http://www.ritasue.com/ and http://www.ndsu.edu/career_center/)

Software Engineer is the Best Job in the USA

2006-05-09T11:20:00.000-05:00

According to the CNN money survey, software engineering is the number one rank in the top 50 job in the USA. Please read the following CNN money article below for the detail.

Software Engineer
Why it's great Software engineers are needed in virtually every part of the economy, making this one of the fastest-growing job titles in the U.S. Even so, it's not for everybody.

Designing, developing and testing computer programs requires some pretty advanced math skills and creative problem-solving ability. If you've got them, though, you can work and live where you want: Telecommuting is quickly becoming widespread.

The profession skews young -- the up-all-night-coding thing gets tired -- but consulting and management positions aren't hard to come by once you're experienced.

What's cool Cutting-edge projects, like designing a new video game or tweaking that military laser. Extra cash from freelance gigs. Plus, nothing says cool like great prospects.

What's not Jobs at the biggest companies tend to be less creative (think Neo, pre-Matrix). Outsourcing is a worry. Eyestrain and back, hand and wrist problems are common.

Top-paying job Release engineers, who are responsible for the final version of any software product, earn six figures.

Education Bachelor's degree, but moving up the ladder often requires a master's degree.

The Future of Software Engineering Tools and Environments

2006-02-09T00:08:00.001-06:00

Tools and environments to aid developers in producing software have existed, in one form or another, since the early days of computer programming. They are becoming increasingly crucial as the demand for software increases, time-to-market decreases, and diversity and complexity grow beyond anything imagined a few decades ago. In this paper, we briefly review some of the history of tools and environments in software engineering, and then discuss some key challenges that we believe the field faces over the next decade.

Future Chanllenges in Software Engineering

• The development of methodologies, formalisms, and tool and environment support for separation, extraction and integration of concerns.
• Linguistic and tool support for morphogenic software: software that is malleable for life, sufficiently adaptable to allow context mismatch to be overcome with acceptable effort, repeatedly, as new, unanticipated contexts arise.
• The development of new methodologies, formalisms, and processes to address nontraditional software lifecycles, and the tool and environment support to facilitate them.
• The development of new methodologies, formalisms, processes and tool and environment support to address the engineering of software in new, challenging domains, such as pervasive computing and e-commerce.
• The adoption or adaptation of XML, Enterprise Java Beans and sophisticated message brokering for integration of both tools and commercial applications.

Reference: Harold Ossher, William Harrison, and Peri Tarr; “Software engineering tools and environments: a roadmap, Proceedings of the Conference on The Future of Software Engineering, May 2000

Teaching Software Engineering in Human Aspect

2006-02-09T00:08:00.000-06:00

This paper highlights the teaching of human aspects of software engineering, by presenting a course that deals with this topic.

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING COURSE DESCRIPTION

Lesson 1 - The Nature of Software Engineering: The aim of this lesson is to increase learners’ awareness of the fact that most of the reasons for software development success and failure are people-centered reasons, not technology. This target is achieved by asking students to analyze development environments and situations that illuminate different humanrelated topics.

Lesson 2 - Software Engineering Methods: This lesson aims at increasing learners’ awareness of the human aspects of software development methods. This target is achieved by analyzing what goes on in the daily life of individual software engineers when they work according to a specific process.

Lesson 3 - Working in Software Teams: Our aim in this lesson is to let learners comprehend the influence of teamwork on the actual process of software development. Specifically, dilemmas that are relevant for software teamwork are discussed.

Lesson 4 - Software as a Product: This lesson highlights customers’ importance and role in software development environments. Accordingly, special emphasis is put on topics related to requirements (e.g., requirement gathering and understanding).

Lesson 5 - Code of Ethics of Software Engineering: In this lesson learners are introduced to the concepts of ethics in general and the Code of Ethics of Software Engineering in particular. This lesson aims at educating students to identify situations in which ethical considerations should be intertwined in software development processes and to conceive the Code of Ethics of Software Engineering as a tool that can be used both for the identification of ethical dilemmas as well as for their solving.

Lesson 6 - International Perspective on Software Engineering: This lesson highlights connections between global events and different cultures on SE processes. In addition, gender and minorities’ issues are discussed.

Lesson 7 - Different Perspectives on Software Engineering: This lesson aims at increasing learners’ awareness to the fact that SE can be viewed from different perspectives, each one emphasizing different aspects of the discipline. For this aim learners are introduced to different perspectives towards SE and are requested to examine what elements of each perspective fit their perception of SE.

Lesson 8 - The History of Software Engineering: The history of SE is used for illustrating that the nature of its short history is reflected in the nature of the field itself. Such connections are highlighted during the course in general and in this lesson in particular.

Lesson 9 - Program Comprehension, Code Inspections, and Refactoring: In this lesson learners are encouraged to observe connections between programming style and the daily life of software developers, for example, with respect to code inspections and refactoring processes.

Lesson 10 - Learning Processes in Software Engineering: This lesson highlights the cognitive aspect of software development processes. It is intended that learners will appreciate the importance of learning processes in SE in general and of a reflective mode of thinking in particular

Lesson 11 - Abstraction and Other Heuristics of Software Development: In this lesson learners become aware of heuristics that can guide the performance of different activities throughout the process of software development. Specifically, the concept of abstraction and its relevance and contribution to software development processes is examined.

Lesson 12 - Software as a Business: This lesson discussed in brief several business related issues to software development.

Lesson 13 - Case Studies of Software Engineering: In this lesson students are presented with case studies and examine them according to the cognitive and social theories presented so far in the course.

Lesson 14 - Students’ Summary Projects and Presentations: In this lesson students present case studies that they have developed, reflect on the construction process of their case studies and present questions for discussion related to their case studies.

Reference: Orit Hazzan and Jim Tomayko; Education & training track: Teaching human aspects of software engineering, Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Software engineering, May 2005

Software Engineering Conferences

2005-11-17T15:26:00.001-06:00

Software Engineering Conferences in 2005 and 2006

2005 Conferences

2-5 October 2005 - Third International Conference on Knowledge Capture - Banff, Canada
5-6 October 2005 - COTS in Defence conference - London, UK
16-18 October 2005 - OOPSLA 2005 (Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications) - San Diego, California
18-20 October 2005 - International Research Workshop for Process Improvement in Small Settings - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
24-27 October 2005 - 8th Annual Systems Engineering Conference - BSan Diego, California
25-26 October 2005 - ICSTEST-E 2005, International Conference on Software Testing - Bilbao, Spain
26 October 2005 - WINMEC - Wireless Internet for the Mobile Enterprise Consortium - RFID Industry Forum - Los Angeles, California
26-27 October 2005 - Huntsville Simulation Conference 2005 - Huntsville, Alabama
27 October 2005 - Real-Time & Embedded Computing Conference (RTECC) - Sheraton Reston Hotel - Washington DC
1-3 November 2005 - Techniques and Tools for Successful IT Projects - Linthicum, Maryland
6-9 November 2005 - 5th International Conference on Hybrid Intelligent Systems (HIS'05) - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
7-10 November 2005 - 12th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2005) - Washington DC
7-11 November 2005 - 2nd IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-hoc and Sensor Systems (IEEE MASS 2005) - Washington DC
8-11 November 2005 - 16th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE 2005) - Chicago, Illinois
14-18 November 2005 - th Annual CMMI Technology Conference and User Group - Denver, Colorado
9-11 November 2005 - SEPG Latin America Conference 2005 - Guadalajara, Mexico
13-17 November 2005 - COMDEX 2005 - Las Vegas, Nevada
13-17 November 2005 - ACM SIGAda Annual International Conference on the Ada Programming Language (SIGAda 2005) - Atlanta, Georgia
17-18 November 2005 - ISESE 2005 - Noosa Heads, Queensland, Australia
20-22 November 2005 - 2005 International Workshop on Scalable Semantic Web Knowledge Base Systems - New York City, New York
23-25 November 2005 - International Conference on Cyberworlds - Singapore
29 November-1 December 2005 - Software & Systems Engineering and their Applications (ICSSEA 2005) - Paris, France
30 November 2005 - ACM Computer Security Day - Washington DC
5-9 December 2005 - The 18th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence - Sydney, Australia
6-9 December 2005 - 2005 IFIP International Conference on Embedded And Ubiquitous Computing (EUC'2005) - Nagasaki, Japan
16-18 December 2005 - The 2005 International Conference on Embedded Software and Systems (ICESS-05) - Xi'an, China

2006 Conferences

16-18 January 2006 - International Workshop on Sensor Networks (IWSN'06) in conjunction with APWeb 2006 - Harbin, China
13-17 February 2006 - fifth International Conference on COTS-Based Software Systems (ICCBSS 2006) - Orlando, Florida
6-9 March 2006 - Strong Process Foundations, New Horizons - SEPG 2006 - Nashville, Tennessee
13-15 March 2006 - IEEE International Sympoisum on Secure Software Engineering (ISSSE 2006) - McLean, Virginia
2-7 April 2006 - Spring Simulation Multiconference (SpringSim) and the Simulation Interoperability Workshop (SIW) - Huntsville, Alabama
3-7 April 2006 - Embedded Systems Conference - San Jose, California
10-13 April 2006 - WEBIST 2006 - 2nd International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Setúbal, Portugal
18 April 2006 - Workshop on Secure Software Engineering Education & Training (WSSEET 2006) - Turtle Bay, Oahu, Hawaii
18-20 April 2006 - Second International Workshop on Security in Networks and Distributed Systems (SNDS-06) - Vienna, Austria
18-21 April 2006 - Australian Software Engineering Conference (ASWEC 2006) - Sydney, Australia
19-21 April 2006 - Conference on Software Engineering Education & Training (CSEE&T) - Turtle Bay, Oahu, Hawaii
20-22 April 2006 - Sixth SIAM International Conference on Data Mining - Bethesda, Maryland
23-27 April 2006 - ACM Symposium on Applied Computing-SAC 2006 - Special Track on Distributed Systems and Grid Computing - Dijon, France
25-26 April 2006 - SEI Software Architecture Technology User Network (SATURN) Workshop - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
25-26 April 2006 - SEI Software Architecture Technology User Network - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
1-4 May 2006 - Systems & Software Technology Conference (SSTC 2006) - Salt Lake City, Utah
2-3 May 2006 - Multinational Information Sharing Conference - McLean, Virginia
22-26 May 2006 - Fifteenth International World Wide Web Conference - Edinburgh, Scotland
23-27 May 2006 - The Eighth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Paphos - Cyprus
28-31 May 2006 - International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS 2006) - Reading, UK
30 May - 1 June 2006 - First International Conference on Scalable Information Systems (INFOSCALE) - Hong Kong
5-9 June 2006 - 11th International Conference on Reliable Software Technologies - Ada-Europe 2006 - Porto, Portugal
7-10 June 2006 - IFIP Working Group 8.6 Conference 2006-The Transfer and Diffusion of IT for rganizational Resilience - Galway, Ireland
26-28 June 2006 - ITiCSE (Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education) 2006 - University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
26-29 June 2006 - CEC’06 and EEE’06 Joint Conferences - Real-Time Enterprises - San Francisco, California
25--28 September 2006 - Embedded Systems Conference - Boston, MA

Agile Modeling and the Rational Unified Process

2005-11-03T14:31:00.000-06:00

Agile Modeling (AM) is a practices-based software process whose scope is to describe how to model and document in an effective and agile manner. The practices of AM should be used, ideally in whole, to enhance other, more complete software process such as eXtreme Programming (XP), the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF), the Rational Unified Process (RUP), the Agile Unified Process (AUP), and the Enterprise Unified Process (EUP) to name a few. These processes cover a wider scope than AM, in the first three cases the development process and in the fourth the full software process including both development and production. Although these processes all include modeling and documentation activities, in one form or the other, there is definitely room for improvement. In the case of XP and MSF the modeling processes should be better defined, and in the case of both the RUP and the EUP the modeling processes could definitely stand to be made more agile.
(For more information please Ref: Scott Ambler, http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileModelingRUP.htm)

How Modeling Works in the Unified Process:

All efforts, including modeling, is organized into disciplines (formerly called workflows) in the UP and is performed in an iterative and incremental manner. The lifecycles of the AUP in Figure 1. The AUP is a subset of the RUP and the EUP a superset of the it. I like to say that the UP is serial in the large and iterative in the small. The six phases of the EUP clearly occur in a serial manner over time, at the beginning of an UP project your focus is on project initiation activities during the Inception phase, once your initial scope is understood your major focus becomes requirements analysis and architecture evolution during the Elaboration phase, then your focus shifts to building your system during the Construction phase, then you deliver your software during the Transition phase, you operate and support your software in the Production phase, and finally you remove it from production during the Retirement phase. However, on a day-to-day basis you are working in an iterative manner, perhaps doing some modeling, some implementation, some testing, and some management activities.

In the RUP there are three disciplines that encompass modeling activities for a single project – Business Modeling, Requirements, and Analysis & Design – and the EUP adds Enterprise Business Modeling and Enterprise Architecture. The AUP on the other hand, being a subset of the RUP, combines the three modeling disciplines into a single Model discipline.
(Ref: Scott Ambler, Agile Modeling and the Rational Unified Process,http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileModelingRUP.htm )

How to Make a Computer Secure ?

2005-10-06T17:05:00.000-05:00

Techniques to Make a Computer Secure

Computer security is a field of computer science concerned with the control of risks related to computer use.

The means traditionally taken to realize this objective is to attempt to create a secure computing platform, designed so that agents (users or programs) can only perform actions that have been allowed. This involves specifying and implementing a security policy. The actions in question can be reduced to operations of access, modification and deletion. Computer security can be seen as a subfield of security engineering, which looks at broader security issues in addition to computer security [1].

The Challenges of Computer Security

We must extend secure access to different kinds of access ranging from Web browsers to mobile phones, handhelds or other devices. Successful security management solutions should be designed to work across platforms and applications to integrate and support critical business processes. The organization should be able to establish centralized, automated policies and processes to help minimize security risks and address regulatory mandates - freeing IT staff from routine security tasks to focus on integrating existing systems and extending the network [2].

Techniques for creating secure systems

The following techniques can be used in engineering secure systems. These techniques, whilst useful, do not of themselves ensure security. One security maxim is "a security system is no stronger than its weakest link"

Automated theorem proving and other verification tools can enable critical algorithms and code used in secure systems to be mathematically proven to meet their specifications.
Thus simple microkernels can be written so that we can be sure they don't contain any bugs: eg EROS[1] and Coyotos.
A bigger OS, able of providing a standard API like POSIX, can be built on a microkernel using small API servers running as normal programs. If one of these API servers has a bug, the kernel and the other servers are not affected: eg Hurd.
Cryptographic techniques can be used to defend data in transit between systems, reducing the probability that data exchanged between systems can be intercepted or modified.
Strong authentication techniques can be used to ensure that communication end-points are who they say they are.
Secure cryptoprocessors can be used to leverage physical security techniques into protecting the security of the computer system.
Chain of trust techniques can be used to attempt to ensure that all software loaded has been certified as authentic by the system's designers.
Mandatory access control can be used to ensure that privileged access is withdrawn when privileges are revoked. For example, deleting a user account should also stop any processes that are running with that user's privileges.
Capability and access control list techniques can be used to ensure privilege separation and mandatory access control. The next sections discuss their use.

Besides the above techniques, we can take some other initiative to make the computer secure such as

In a production system when an application provides no way to patch already known security flaws, don't use it or use another one. Publicly known flaws are the main entry used by worms to automatically break into a system and then spread to other systems connected to it. The security website Secunia provides a search tool for unpatched known flaws in popular products.

Cryptographic techniques involve transforming information, scrambling it so it becomes unreadable during transmission. The intended recipient can unscramble the message, but eavesdroppers cannot.
Backups are a way of securing your information; they are another copy of all your important computer files kept in another location. These files are kept on hard disks, CD-R’s, CD-RW’s, and tapes. Backups can be kept in a multitude of locations, some of the suggested places would be a fireproof, waterproof, and heat proof safe, or separate location than that in which the original files are contained. There is also a third option, which involves using one of the companies on the internet that backs up files for both business and individuals.
Anti-virus software deletes or quarantines viruses on your computer, in essence protecting you against viruses. This software once on your computer needs to be updated regularly, as there are new viruses created daily. There are a couple things that are an important part of any antivirus software, one should look for a good detection rate, compatibility with your system, easy to use, and must have the ability to update.
Firewalls are hardware and/or software components that protect computers from intruders. The firewall will not allow anything to enter your computer without the correct markings. All networks require a firewall to keep out people and files that are hazardous to the system.
Access authorization is a way of protecting your computer by using authentication systems, so you know who is trying to get in. This system would allow only those with authorized access into certain areas of the computer or to open certain files. There are a lot of methods in detecting one's identity. The most commonly used are passwords or identification cards, however as technology advances more methods are becoming common such as smart cards or biometrics, for example with fingerprints.
Encryption is used to protect your message from the eyes of others. It can be done in several ways by switching the characters around, replacing characters with others, and even removing characters from the message. These have to be used in combination to make the encryption secure enough, that is to say, sufficiently difficult to crack. Public key encryption is a refined and practical way of doing encryption. It allows for example anyone to write a message for a list of recipients, and only those recipients will be able to read that message.
Intrusion-detection systems can scan a network for people that are on the network but who should not be there or are doing things that they should not be doing, for example trying a lot of passwords to gain access to the network.
Social engineering awareness - Keeping yourself and your employees aware of the dangers of social engineering and/or having a policy in place to prevent social sngineering can reduce successful breaches of your network and servers.

Testing and QA resources

References:

Computer security, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_security, web retrieve on October 4, 2005
The security and compliance challenge, http://www-306.ibm.com/software/tivoli/features/securitymanagement/

Software Testing and QA Organizations

2005-10-04T14:55:00.000-05:00

Software Testing and QA Professional Organizations

I did research and created the following software testing and quality assurance organizations list below. Hope it will be useful for the visitor and they do not have to waste time again searching these useful information. You can also visit my other site to get many other related information about software development, software testing, QA in general. Please visit my other site at www.TheFreeSoftware.com

Test-driven development

2005-10-03T23:32:00.000-05:00

Test-driven development

Test-driven development (TDD) is one of the central techniques of Extreme Programming [2]. In TDD, we write tests not as an afterthought to ensure our code works, but instead as just part of the everyday, every-minute way of building software. Instead of writing detailed design specifications on paper, we write them in code. Instead of first striving to completely design a system on paper, we use tests to lead our design. Instead of coding for hours at a stretch, only to find our planning went awry, we use test-first design to pace ourselves, always assuring that we are moving forward precisely with each passing minute [3].
In figure , we show the state diagram of TDD.

A preliminary step is to get the latest version of the code and run all the tests to ensure they pass. The following steps we follow to develop software in TDD:
a) Choose a test case.
b) Write the test. The test will not compile, since the code is not yet written.
c) Write the code stub. The test will now compile, but we will get a red light because it should fail.
d) Write the code until all tests pass.
e) Refactor the code, ensuring that it has the simplest design possible for the functionality built to date

Kent Beck [4] defines two simple rules for TDD. First, we write new business code only when an automated test has failed. Second, we eliminate any duplication that we find.

Advantages of TDD:

In the traditional development method, the cost of changing requirements increased exponentially, but in TDD, it rises only slightly over time.
TDD helps understanding requirements and design better. A developer cannot write effective test cases without understanding requirements and design documents.
Involving developers, tester and stakeholders in a team helps understanding requirements and design quickly and easily. This team also guides the project in right direction.
Boost up team’s confidence. TDD gives team the courage to move forward. Small releases and each module encourage team to go to next steps [3].
TDD take much less time spent debugging mistakes in the code. In TDD, we have full test suite and it makes debugging quicker and easier [3].

Disadvantages of TDD:

The initial learning curve is steep in TDD. Even experienced developers need to spend a significant amount of time practice writing effective test cases [3].
We believe that TDD is not suitable for those individuals who do not have prior knowledge in design, testing, and refactoring and generally introductory programming course students are not expected to have those skills.
TDD success required long time practices. Chaplin listed the following common pitfalls when a developer uses TDD for the first time [1]:
Tests are very weak.
* Test code is a mess and becomes cumbersome to maintain.
* Tests are too big and do too much.
* Test code is duplicated across multiple tests.
* Tests are too far reaching.

References:

1. http://www.maxwideman.com/papers/linearity/prototyping.htm, Web retrieve on September 10, 2005
2. Müller, Matthias M. and Padberg, Frank; “About the Return on Investment of Test-Driven Development”, In International Workshop on Economics-Driven Software Engineering Research (EDSER), Portland, Oregon, May 2003.
3. Rahman, Syed and Salah, Akram; “Adopting Test-Driven Development in Web Applications' Developments" ISCA 20th International Conference on Computers and Their Applications (CATA-2005), March 16-18, 2005,New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
4. Beck, K. 2000, Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change, Addison-Wesley.