15-413 Software Engineering Practicum

Course Structure

This is a project course.  You will work in teams of 3-5 (just one team given the 2008 enrollment).  In the first week, you will choose among several potential projects proposed by clients here at CMU.   You will gather requirements from your client, plan your efforts, and then architect and design your project. You will build the project using an iterative process, gathering feedback from your client after each iteration.  You will be responsible for ensuring your project is of high quality and meets the user's needs. At the end of the course you will deliver the project to the client, along with all necessary documentation.  You will also reflect on your experience and what you have learned through the project.

You can write code in any project course.  The goal of this course, therefore, is to give you a chance to follow software engineering process right.  This is a luxury you may never get in industry, where pressures to deliver are so great that corners get cut, often with disasterous long-term results.  With the experience of this course under your belt, you will be able to choose the elements of process that are essential for an effectively working team, and the background to effectively resist pressures to meet a short-term deadline at high long-term cost.

In this course you will follow a modified Scrum process.  You will meet with your team twice weekly and with the instructor once weekly.  There will be very few lectures, and only when necessary to introduce a new process element you will be using in your course.

Project and Process Requirements

• All code and all documents must be under source control
• You must track and categorize defects using Orthogonal Defect Classification
  
• You must meet weekly with clients
  
• Over the course of the semester, you must formally inspect a requirements document, formally inspect a design document, and formally inspect a critical section of code.  You may front-load these inspections (e.g. do them all in iteration 1), but you may not back-load them--each iteration must have at least one inspection until you've done all three.  Other than this, you are free to choose any inspection process you like.
  
• You must have a set of regression tests, automated if possible, and the tests must run at or near 100% at all times.
  

Lecture Topics

• Scrum process, [slides, overview paper] as modified for the course
  
• Orthogonal Defect Classification [slides, overview paper, case study paper]
• 15-313 lectures - for architecture, analysis, and process
• 17-654 lectures - for testing and inspection
  

Course Schedule

This schedule is subject to modification as needed to accomodate the project, as negotiated by each team and the instructor.  Note that Sprint 1 is a week longer (Sept 4-Oct 9) because of the need to define architecture, while Sprint 3 is slightly shorter due to the Thanksgiving break.  Planned dates are as follows:

August 26	Project list available
August 28	Project choice due
September 4	Overall project plan due
September 11	Refined project plan due Sprint 1 requirements and plan due
September 18	Architecture and high-level design document due, including an inspection report Also turn in the first weekly progress report
October 2	Sprint 1 test plan due
October 9	Sprint 1 complete
October 16	Sprint 2 requirements and plan due Sprint 1 report due
October 23	Initial feedback received from clients
October 30	Sprint 2 test plan due
November 6	Sprint 2 complete
November 13	Sprint 3 requirements and plan due Sprint 2 report due
November 20	Sprint 3 test plan due
December 4	Sprint 3 complete
Finals week	Final project presentation 360o peer evaluations due Individual reflection due Project report due Project artifacts delivered to client

Evaluation

• 1/2 of your grade will be project deliverables and presentations.
  
• 1/3 of your grade will be determined by your client--are they satisfied with the product you deliver, and the way you interact with them?  The instructor will gather feedback directly from your client halfway through the course (1/3), and at the end of the course (2/3).
  
• 1/6 of your grade will be based on how well you follow software engineering process.  This grade will be the average of a grade for each week, based on your weekly meeting with the instructor.
  
• Thresholds are:
• 90-100: A
• 80-89: B
• 70-79: C
• 60-69: D
• 0-59: F
• Grades will be given as a team, except for the individual reflection
• In the event that individual contributions within the team differ substantially, as determined by peer evaluations and the instructor's perception, the instructor reserves the right to make grade corrections to reflect individual contributions.  These corrections will not be greater, percentage-wise, than the differences in contribution as measured by the peer evaluations; they may be less if the instructor believes the peer evaluations are exaggerated.  So keep a good working relationship with your team-mates if at all possible.