Software Engineering Group Projects (COMP3100/3500/4500)

Welcome to Software Engineering Projects for 2013

"Software people are not alone in facing complexity. Physics deals with terribly complex objects even at the "fundamental" particle level. The physicist labors on, however, in a firm faith that there are unifying principles to be found, whether in quarks or in unifiedfield theories. Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary.

No such faith comforts the software engineer. Much of the complexity that he must master is arbitrary complexity, forced without rhyme or reason by the many human institutions and systems to which his interfaces must conform. These differ from interface to interface, and from time to time, not because of necessity but only because they were designed by different people, rather than by God."

This course aims to mature and improve your abilities as a software developer. This is done at the 'coal face' of software development, namely a real group year long project.

Students work in small groups and participate in all the development phases (requirements analysis, design, construction, testing and documentation) of a nontrivial software system. As well, each group has to address the control of the development process by constructing and following a detailed software development management plan.

Part of the experience of this course will help students to develop leadership skills and become an effective member of a team which makes, defends and implements appropriate engineering decisions related to the development of software systems that deliver measurable value to industry and university clients.

Students will be organised into teams which will work with industry and university clients on real-world projects. The principal role of COMP4500 students will be to manage the projects while COMP3100/3500 students will develop and deliver the technical expertise needed to complete the software engineering life cycle activities required to deliver software of value to their clients.

In 2013 Dr Eric McCreath is taking over as course coordinator this will involve some restructuring of the course, however, the fundamental learning goals and outcomes will remain unchanged.

These pages will be rebuild over December/January. I will post a "request for projects" in early Jan 2013 for clients that are interested in providing/directing/supervising our students in a project.

If you have any questions please email me directly (Dr Eric McCreath).