MSc: Managing Software Development
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FULL SEMESTER. Managing Software Development
- Course name: FULL SEMESTER. Managing Software Development
- Code discipline: SE-04
- Subject area:
Short Description
This course covers the following concepts: People Management; Processes and Software Development Life-cycles; Planning and Controlling.
Prerequisites
Prerequisite subjects
- Understanding of Agile Processes, for example SCRUM
- Writing 1 page essays
Prerequisite topics
Course Topics
| Section | Topics within the section |
|---|---|
| People Management |
|
| Software development processes |
|
| Defining project success criteria |
|
| Planning and controlling software development projects |
|
Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
What is the main purpose of this course?
Large scale software development requires the ability to manage resources - both human and computational - through control of the development process. This course is a breadth oriented course, designed to help technically-trained software engineers to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to lead a project team, understand the relationship of software development to overall project engineering, estimate time and costs, and understand the software process. The nature of software development is sufficiently unique to require specialized management techniques, especially in the areas of the estimating and scheduling.
ILOs defined at three levels
Level 1: What concepts should a student know/remember/explain?
By the end of the course, the students should be able to ...
- importance of people in software development
- trade-offs in various managing style
- importance to manage customer expectations
- major differences in the software development process
- several methods to plan projects and estimate their duration
Level 2: What basic practical skills should a student be able to perform?
By the end of the course, the students should be able to ...
- Impact of different personality types on team performance
- Strengths and weaknesses of specific software development processes
- Ways to define the project success criteria and potential risks
- Customer oriented work breakdown and planning
Level 3: What complex comprehensive skills should a student be able to apply in real-life scenarios?
By the end of the course, the students should be able to ...
- Apply critical reasoning to assess root-causes of problems in software development process
- Select a right process of a particular software development project
- Define the success thresholds.
- Evaluate and manage risks
- Estimate project duration with several methods
- Communicate with customers on the project related matters.
Grading
Course grading range
| Grade | Range | Description of performance |
|---|---|---|
| A. Excellent | 80-100 | - |
| B. Good | 65-79 | - |
| C. Satisfactory | 50-64 | - |
| D. Poor | 0-49 | - |
Course activities and grading breakdown
| Activity Type | Percentage of the overall course grade |
|---|---|
| Labs/seminar classes | 10 |
| Interim performance assessment | 90 |
| Exams | 0 |
Recommendations for students on how to succeed in the course
Resources, literature and reference materials
Open access resources
- This course makes use of many reference materials that are posted to Moodle.
Closed access resources
Software and tools used within the course
Teaching Methodology: Methods, techniques, & activities
Activities and Teaching Methods
| Learning Activities | Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3 | Section 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Homework and group projects | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Reports | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Essays | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Discussions | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Formative Assessment and Course Activities
Ongoing performance assessment
Section 1
| Activity Type | Content | Is Graded? |
|---|---|---|
| Question | Simply list the separate processes that a development team should manage. Also explain why each is, or is not important? | 1 |
| Question | What are typical personality treats of "technical people"? | 1 |
| Question | What are the Tuckman’s team development stages? | 1 |
| Question | What leadership style(s), as discussed by Goleman, would be counterproductive in certain cases? | 1 |
| Question | Looking at McCarthy’s article on participatory leadership, in what situation would a “coercive” style be used in team building? | 1 |
| Question | The Heskett paper effectively recommends involving customers more in your work. What are some software development activities that would be suited to this? What are some where you don’t think customers should be involved and why? | 1 |
| Question | Based on OBU case, what were the top issues involved with the development of MS Word with regards to stakeholders, market, technology, business drivers, culture and schedule? | 0 |
| Question | Apply leadership/teamwork concepts to a project development problem at SATERA. | 0 |
| Question | Discuss the key issues dealing with managing customer expectations with the Gigaplex client and propose a course or courses of action to resolve the problems you identified. | 0 |
Section 2
| Activity Type | Content | Is Graded? |
|---|---|---|
| Question | Pressman identifies some misuse of process metrics. Which of these misuses is the most harmful? Explain why. | 1 |
| Question | Pressman states that “correctness” is “the degree to which the software program performs its required function.” He says that defects per KLOC is the most common measurement for correctness. Do you agree or disagree that this is an appropriate measurement and why? | 1 |
| Question | What do you think are some negatives to using Goal Question Metrics? | 1 |
| Question | What is the difference between a lifecycle and a process framework? Give some specifics. | 1 |
| Question | What assumptions should you make about stakeholders when choosing an incremental model? Explain why you chose these. | 1 |
| Question | Is there a difference between iterative and incremental models? Explain. | 1 |
| Question | What lifecycle does the ACDM framework fit under? Explain. | 1 |
| Question | Specifically identify three current (time paper was written) critical Tartan Case software development processes. | 0 |
| Question | In Tartan Case, what metrics are collected, or should be collected with an eye to improving the processes. Include a discussion on analyzing and changing the processes. | 0 |
| Question | Provide justified recommendations to improve Tartan’s software quality. Specifically, what would you change and what metrics would you use to analyze the effectiveness of current processes and/or recommended changes? | 0 |
| Question | Determine what SDLC and process framework you would recommend and why for each of the four software projects: OBU, Denver Baggage, Avionics development, and Department of Transportation. | 0 |
Section 3
| Activity Type | Content | Is Graded? |
|---|---|---|
| Question | What is the difference between verifying and validating requirements? Be specific. | 1 |
| Question | What are the main activities of requirements engineering? | 1 |
| Question | What are the requirements elicitation problems? | 1 |
| Question | What are the Quality Attributes? Describe ways to elicit quality attributes requirements. | 1 |
| Question | Explain how one can use the Pareto principle in the context of risk management. Give an example. | 1 |
| Question | Give examples of methods to assess risk impact. | 1 |
| Question | What is the difference between Threshold of Success and Risks? | 1 |
| Question | Describe the key issues that found in the case study with regards to requirements management. | 0 |
| Question | Explain what approaches are selected in the case study and why? What was the result of applying those approaches on the project and team how addressed these issues? | 0 |
| Question | According to the case study, what are the most critical factor in software quality and the most difficult problem that that the team faced in their projects? | 0 |
| Question | Identify 5 key risks in case study and prioritize them. Simply state and justify your prioritization method. Ensure these are in the Condition-Consequence format, include context statements and time horizons. | 0 |
| Question | Provide mitigation strategies to the risk identified in the case study. | 0 |
| Question | Develop Threshold of Success for the case study project. | 0 |
Section 4
| Activity Type | Content | Is Graded? |
|---|---|---|
| Question | What is Work Breakdown structure and how can it be applyed for project planning? | 1 |
| Question | List several estimation methods and discuss their trade-offs? | 1 |
| Question | What is the activity planning? | 1 |
| Question | Give a definition of a Critical Path? | 1 |
| Question | What is milestone planning? | 1 |
| Question | Discuss several methods for release planning? | 1 |
| Question | Propose a Work Breakdown Structure for a given project. | 0 |
| Question | Give minimum duration of a project give a list of tasks and their dependencies. | 0 |
| Question | Develop a milestone plan. | 0 |
| Question | Propose a release plan for a given project based on estimations and priorities of tasks. | 0 |
Final assessment
Section 1
- Based on a brief description of a situation on a project, give a recommendation for a leadership style. Justify.
- Name Tuckman’s team development stages? What activities are typical of each of those stages?
- Explain the Barry Boehm’s few on managing customers expectations. Give an example.
Section 2
- Give definition of a process.
- What is a Software Development Life-Cycle and how does it differ from from a process?
- List several software development processes currently in use and give their trade-offs?
- Based on a brief description of a software project, what software development process would you recommend? Justify.
Section 3
- Given a situation, identify, prioritise possible risks and discuss mitigation strategy.
- What is Threshold of Success and hos does it differ from Risks.
- Explain the condition-consequence definition for risk statements.
- Give an example of criticality assessment for risk statements.
Section 4
- List several types of Work Breakdown Structures and discuss trade-offs.
- Apply critical path calculations to an activity graph. Give the latest start for a specific task.
- Define milestone planning.
- Explain MOSCOW method for release planning.
- During semester study and write a paper on a software engineering topic of your choice.
The retake exam
Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4