Computer Science B665

Software Engineering Management

Course Description

B665 Software Engineering Management (3 cr.) P: P565 or consent of instructor. Seminar in software engineering and management. Readings and presentations of classic works and current papers in the field. Topics include: the programming activity, program products, software life cycle, programming teams and supervising of programming projects. Actual supervision of one or more programming teams producing software products.

Texts

Roger S. Pressman, Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach Fifth edition. McGraw-Hill, 2001.

We will also use papers as a source of information.

also recommended

Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man-Month, Addison-Wesley, 1995.

Course Responsibilities

  There will be three categories of course responsibilities:

1. Oral presentations and class participation.
2. Writing a paper.
3. Project supervision.

  During the semester each participant is expected to present at least one paper and contribute to the discussion of other papers. The presentation of a paper will require careful reading of the paper and involve three major activities: (1) posting on the class news group, at least one day in advance of the presentation, significant questions concerning the article, (2) initiating class discussion, usually by giving a synopsis of the significant points, a critique of the article, or a similar presentation, and (3) leading the subsequent discussion on the article.

  Students who are not presenting the days' paper are expected to read that paper, although perhaps not in as much detail as the presenter, to read and consider the questions on the news group, and participate in the class discussion.

  You are required to write a term paper which discusses a topic in software engineering. The paper may be an original work, a detailed review of several papers, an in-depth analysis of one paper, or a discussion of a case study. The paper may also develop concrete suggestions for improvements or extensions to the Information Systems or Software Engineering Management course sequences, including tools, procedures, and materials for implementing these suggestions. Your paper must be well-written and meet standard stylistic criteria for a good technical paper. To achieve this goal, your writing task will consist of three phases:

1. An outline or single page description of the content and format of the paper.
2. A first draft, which provides feedback without grading.
3. A final draft for grading.

The paper must always include some form of literature search. The literature search should be conducted by more than just thumbing through a few recent journals. In particular, use the Computer Science Citation Index to explore the subject area.

The most common form of this paper in previous years has been the annotated bibliography. An annotated bibliography is more than just a list of a few articles with a sentence or two about each. It is first a discussion of a subject area, attempting to classify the major issues, conceptual approaches, and methodologies. The articles of the bibliography are then described in terms of this categorization, in addition to describing their major results and conclusions.

  Each stdent in this course will be assigned the role of supervisor for one or more teams of students from the Information Systems class and, later, the role of Quality Assurance Monitor (QAM) for other teams. As Supervisor, you will give guidance and advice to the teams and facilitate communications between the teams and the instructor. As QAM, you will evaluate the Test Plan (the testing aspects of the Requirements Analysis and Designs) and ensure that the Test Plan is followed during the Testing phase. The QAM role is most relevant during the second semester (B666).

  The grading of these three categories of responsibilities will be weighted approximately as follows: