Software Construction

COMP2500 Software Construction for Software Engineers

2009

• topics
• presentations
• assessment criteria
• written reports
• submission and deadlines

The group presentations are scheduled for Wednesday 13 May

The COMP2500 course is only for students enrolled in the Bachelor of Software Engineering (or those with special permission).
Most of the subject matter and classes are the same as COMP2100 Software Construction: the laboratory classes, homeworks, major assignments, and forms of assessment are all the same except for a series of professional development seminars and presentations. The differences between COMP2500 Software Construction for Software Engineers and COMP2100 are:

in the content:

COMP2500 add some work that is about developing your knowledge of the professional tools that are hot in industry, and developing your professsional communication skills.

in assessment:

you have to give a group oral presentation, and an individual written report

in class contact: revised 27 April

you have 3 extra classes: 2 in the Wednesday 2-hour lecture slot (1–3pm) in weeks 4 and 10 (18 March 2009, 13 May 2009)
and one hour in week 9 (Thursday 7 May 2009). These classes are compulsory for comp2500 students.

the tasks:

you will work in teams of 4 or 5 students to research and orally present a report on a topic on Weds 13 May (see below), and you will also write an individual report on one other group's presentation.

1. You must attend one or more of the two special Software Engineering Seminars.
   

   Attendance at seminars is compulsory. The roll will be marked. You will be allowed to miss one session without penalty. After that, the penalty will be failure with a grade of NCN (incomplete). Absences will only be excused with a letter from a doctor or other health-care professional, or similar. The standard of proof is the same as that required for an extension on an assignment.

2. You must complete two additional assessment items for COMP2500:

   1. a short oral presentation to the class, done in groups, worth 5%, and

   2. a one-page written report on one of the other groups' presentations, done individually, and worth 5% also.

3. Your 30% for continuous assessment will be made up of 10% for each programming assignment, plus 5% for the oral presentation and 5% for the written report. (For COMP2100 students it is 15% for each programming assignment. In other words, the programming assignments are worth fewer marks to software engineers.)

4. There may be differences in the final examination for COMP2500 students. I haven't decided this yet.

You must make a short, group oral presentation to the COMP2500 class. You will do this in groups of four or five. I will choose the groups: group allocations are in a group list text file.

Here's the scenario: You are a new recruit working for a software consulting and development firm. This company aspires to be at CMM Level 5 (although they're not quite there yet). So, as well as being given some software development tasks (programming assignments), you are also required to take part in the company's innovation program. In your groups you will spend some time investigating promising new technologies relevant to the company's core business, which is open-source document management, internet and e-commerce development. At the moment the company is a Java shop, using fairly simple Unix development tools. They have recently upgraded their standard development process by mandating version control with Subversion and unit testing with JUnit, but they don't want to stop there. They want to be well informed about alternative developer tools and opportunities for new market areas such as animated advertising for nextgen mobile phones, Web2.0 interactions with business, Web3.0, and also languages, creating content for microblogs, Twitter, providing animated 3D walkthrough mashups of products and people (Life 2.next is better than Second Life – you saw it here first, and it's faster and cheaper), frameworks and so on, so that they can jump onto the right horse before it bolts.

Once you have completed your investigation, you will report back to the company on what you have found. This report will take the form of a 12-15 minute presentation by the entire group. (Leaving 3-5 minutes for questions, your absolute total time will be 18 minutes. This way we will be able to fit all six group presentations in the 2-hour class in Week 9. And then you will take notes on another group's presntation on a different topic (not industrial spying but executive summary).

The content should be pitched as a critical, technical presentation to your peers and managers: not a sales-pitch.

Your presentation should be on one of the following topics:

1. computing clouds (Amazon, Google): a critical comparison

2. toolkits supporting social network computing (e.g. OpenId) and more, critically compared

3. Semantic Web Technology: SPARQL, GRRDL, OWL, microformats etc.

4. blog and microblog support tools such as Django: a critical comparison

5. test-driven development

6. AspectJ

7. net beans

8. AgitarOne

Length of presentations.

Presentations must be between 12 and 15 minutes in length.

Your presentation will be marked out of 10, with 4 marks for content and 6 marks for the presentation itself. The criteria are:

1. Ready to start on time & keep to time, between 12 and 15 minutes in length.

2. Speaking in a clear voice (not too quiet or too loud, easy to understand), good pace (not too fast or too slow).

3. Rapport with audience (frequent eye contact, no distracting mannerisms or fidgetting...).

4. No waffling, maintain interest.

5. Clear and effective visual aids (any text is legible, any graphics are relevant, no silly sound effects or animated transitions without a very good reason).

6. Clear structure (clear beginning, middle and end, satisfying conclusion, signposts letting audience know where you're up to), effective and logical division between team members with flow maintained across the transitions.

7. Suitable amount of content (2-4 points made clearly).

8. Suitable standard and depth of content.

9. Stick to topic, relevance, usefulness of information.

10. Clear conclusion and summary. Yes or No?

As well as giving a presentation in your group, you are also required to prepare a one-page written report on one of the other group presentations.

Here's the scenario: Still in your role as a new member of our consulting firm, you attend an industry conference. You have to share the knowledge you have gained by reporting back to the company on what you have seen and heard.

Requirements for your report

1. Since your report will land on the desks of busy senior executive, it must fit entirely on one side of one sheet of paper.

2. It must have margins of at least 2.5cm all round and be in an 11pt or 12pt font.

3. It must be an executive summary, which means it must be very easy to read for a busy executive with lots of other stuff to think about. These people will not read long blocks of text. They are much happpier with bullet points they can skim. They don't want to have to think.

4. and like any report it must carry its own identification: title, author, and date

Purpose of your report

Your report must do two things:

1. It must summarise the content of the presentation you saw.

2. It must present your own critical evaluation of the technology presented. (Note: This is not your evaluation of the presentation, but of the technology it presents. Would you recommend that your company go deeper into this? Should they adopt it? Should they reject it? Why? Give simple concise reasons backed up by facts, but don't be afraid to give your opinion. Just make it clear what is fact and what is the presenters' opinion and what is yours. If you don't feel confident about the presentation you saw, you may want to do a bit of your own research to help you form a clearer opinion.)

use the submit command of a file with PDF file extension. To submit your report:

1. log in to the student server partch or use one of the CSIT lab machines.
2. have your report in PDF format, following the style requirements detailed on the COMP2500 webpage, in a filename ending in .pdf
3. submit your report as an assignment named SE-OwnReport, using the shell command

    <shell-prompt> submit comp2500 SE-OwnReport yourfilename.pdf
   

Deadline for reports—2009

6PM Friday 15 June 2009

Comp2500 work will be done in groups of 5 or 6. The groups are listed in a separate text file ordered by student ID.

It is your responsibility to make contact with your group members and choose effective team leadership and other roles.

Timetable

1. creating and structuring presentations (Paul Preston week 4)
2. week 9: presentations all groups Wednesday 6 May 2009
   
3. psychology and sociology of working in groups (Anthony Forlin) week 10