Syllabus

Course description

• Determining the objectives of your software development project, and developing a plan to accomplish them;
• Identifying the risks to your project, and taking steps to avoid or mitigate them;
• Communicating with the stakeholders in your software, to learn from them and to keep them aware of your progress;
• Documenting your results clearly and precisely, for your client, your users, and future developers;
• Designing, implementing, and verifying your software.

Activities

Weekly reports

In this course, we are interested not only on the product but also the process by which it is generated. Therefore, it is important to reflect periodically on the history of the project. Do this in written form on a weekly basis, using this template: http://www.csl.mtu.edu/cs479x/www/templates/SDP-weekly-report.html At the end of each month, send me your weekly reflections for the month (in HTML form). I am interested not only in what happened, but why it happened and what consequences it has for the future. Full, honest reporting of project outcomes - both good and bad - is valued. Write your weekly reports individually; their contents will be kept private.

Biweekly meetings

Objectives, timeline, and other shared documentation

Your team will communicate with the client to define the project objectives and a preliminary timeline for attaining them. A report containing the objectives and timeline is due by the end of week 2. The timeline will include milestones with specific deliverables to be shared with your client and with me. The timeline will likely change over the term, but the client and I should be informed of changes.

You should set up a shared repository for code and documentation as soon as possible. Space is available in the csl.mtu.edu domain; please contact me for details.

Course expectations

Each team member is expected to put at least 10 hours of work into the project each week — not including time spent at meetings with me.

Reports are to be prepared and submitted in electronic form, unless there is a compelling reason for a hard copy.

Each team member is expected to participate in the project in all of the following ways:

• Leadership: e.g., organizing and moderating meetings; developing and presenting project plans; monitoring and managing risks.
• Technical activities: e.g., design, coding, testing, specification.
• Communication: e.g., recording meeting minutes; eliciting client requirements; writing user documentation.

In your weekly reflections, you should describe how you have contributed in each of three ways. In your project, you may choose to concentrate on one or two, but be sure to cover all three to a reasonable extent.

Grading

I will give two narrative evaluations of your performance during the semester, via email. The first will be given after Week 7, and the second (with final letter grade) after Week 14. The evaluations will balance individual and team performance roughly equally.

Attendance at biweekly meetings is crucial. One unexcused absence will drop your final grade by a full letter (A to B, AB to BC, etc.). Two unexcused absences will drop your grade to F.