Distributed and Outsourced Software Engineering
Peter Kolb, Bertrand Meyer (Fall semester 2008)
| General info: | Course description | Course books |
| Lectures: | Schedule |
General info
News
| 26.11.2008 | Movies of lectures 1-7 have been added in iPod format: movies. |
| 26.11.2008 | The course evaluation will take place next week during the lecture (Wed. 03.12). |
| 26.11.2008 | Movies lecture 11 are on-line: movies. |
| 20.11.2008 | Movies lectures 9 and 10 are on-line: movies. |
| 05.11.2008 | Movies lecture 8 are on-line: movies. |
| 30.10.2008 | Assignments 3 and 4 are on-line: Assignment 3 Assignment 4. |
| 29.10.2008 | Movies lecture 7 are on-line: movies. |
| 22.10.2008 | Movies lecture 4, 5 and 6 are on-line: movies. |
| 14.10.2008 | Assignment 2 is on-line: Assignment 2. Deadline is Thursday, October 23rd, 10am. |
| 06.10.2008 | Movies have been added in a new format (they include slides + movie). See Schedule |
| 01.10.2008 | The first assignment is on-line: Assignment 1. Deadline is Tuesday, October 14th, 10am. |
| 01.10.2008 | The origo project dose2008 will be used as software development and collaboration platform. If you are not part of this project, send your origo id to Martin Nordio. |
| 01.10.2008 | Movie lecture 3 is on-line: movie. |
| 23.09.2008 | Added link to BTW project description |
| 18.09.2008 | Movies lecture 1 are on-line: first part, second part. Added slides exercise session 1. |
| 17.09.2008 | Updated slides lecture 1, added link to paper: "Design and code reviews in the age of the internet" |
| 16.09.2008 | Updated Grading: 70% Project - 30% exam. Written exam on Wed. 17.12.2008 - RZ F21 - 8:15-10:00. |
| 02.06.2008 | The web page was created. See course description |
Course
description
Distributed and Outsourced Software Engineering
Web page at the computer science department: 251-0273-00
Article about the course
A remarkable phenomenon is affecting the software development scene: the massive transfer of developments to countries such as India and Russia offering highly qualified manpower at rock-bottom salaries. The outsourcing business is already in the hundreds of billions of dollars, causes employment fears among Western programmers, and has consequences on just about every aspect of software development (including education). Offshoring also serves as a magnifier of most of the issues of software engineering, including for example requirements analysis and quality control.
This course explores the offshoring phenomenon from a technical software engineering perspective, providing a set of guidelines for making outsourced projects succeed, through both management approaches (in particular the CMMI) and technical solutions in areas of requirements, specification, design, documentation and quality control. The presentation is based on experience of outsourcing at ABB and other companies.
The participants will take part in a case study exploring techniques for making an offshored project succeed (or recover from problems).
This course provides students with a clear view of the offshore software development phenomenon, enabling them to participate successfully in projects outsourced partially or totally, and also helping them define their own career strategies in the context of outsourcing's continued growth.
Grading
GRADING
- 70% Project - 30% exam. Written exam on Wed. 17.12.2008 - RZ F21 - 8:15-10:00.
Recommended books
- Michael Jackson: Requirements & Specifications,1995, Addison Wesley, ISBN: 0-201-87712-0
Further reading
About Software engineering:
- Bertrand Meyer: Object-Oriented Software Construction, 2nd edition, Prentice Hall, 1997.
- Barry W. Boehm: Software Engineering Economics, Prentice Hall, 1981.
- Fred Brooks: No Silver Bullet - Essence and Accident in Software Engineering, in Computer (IEEE), vol. 20, no. 4, pages 10-19, April 1987.
- John B. Goodenough and Susan Gerhart: Towards a Theory of Test: Data Selection Criteria, in Current Trends in Programming Methodology, ed. Raymond T. Yeh, pages 44-79, Prentice Hall, 1977.
- Peter Naur: Programming with Action Clusters, in BIT, vol. 3, no. 9, pages 250-258, 1969.
- Shari Lawrence Pfleeger and Joanne M Atlee: Software Engineering, 3rd edition, Prentice Hall, 2005.
- SEI (Software Engineering Institute): CMMISM for Software Engineering, Version 1.1, Staged Representation (CMMI-SW, V1.1, Staged), 2005.
- Bertrand Meyer: On Formalism in Specifications, in Software (IEEE), pages 6-26, January 1985.
- Jeannette M. Wing: A Study of 12 Specifications of the Library Problem, in Software (IEEE), vol. 5, no. 4, pages 66-76, July 1988.
- Ralph Young: Recommended Requirements Gathering Practices, in CrossTalk, the Journal of Defense Software Engineering, April 2002.
- Laura Scharer: Pinpointing Requirements, in Datamation, April 1981.
- Southwell et al., cited in Michael G. Christel and Kyo C. Kang, Issues in Requirements Elicitation, Software Engineering Institute, CMU/SEI-92-TR-012 and ESC-TR-92-012, September 1992.
- Becky Winant: Requirement #1: Ask Honest Questions.
- Gerald Kotonya & Ian Sommerville: Requirements Engineering: Processes and Techniques, Wiley, 1998.
- IEEE: IEEE Recommended Practice for Software Requirements Specifiations, IEEE Std 830-1998 (revision of IEEE Std 830-1988).
- Michael Jackson: Software Requirements and Specifications, Addison-Wesley, 1996.
- Mike Mannion and Barry Keepence: SMART Requirements, in ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, vol. 20, no. 2, pages 42-47, April 1995.
- Esther Derby: Building a Requirements Foundation through Customer Interviews.
- Éric Dubois, J. Hagelstein and A. Rifaut: Formal Requirements Engineering with ERAE, in Philips Journal of Research, vol. 43, no. ¾, pages 393-414,1988.
- Ellen Gottesdiener: Requirements Workshops: Collaborating to Explore User Requirements, in Software Management 2002.
- Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides: Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, Addison-Wesley, 1995, ISBN 0201634988
- Karine Arnout's Ph.D. thesis: From Patterns to Components. Click here
Lectures
Schedule
Day |
Time |
Room |
| Wednesday | 08:00-10:00 | RZ F21 |
Project
The project will be managed using the Origo project management framework
PROJECT FILES
Requirements Specification
- Project Template: Software Requirements Spec .pdf, .doc, .rtf
- A Checklist for a Requirements Specification Review .pdf
- Slides of Writing Effective Requirements Specifications .pdf
Quality assurance plan
Examples of Requirements Specification Documents
These documents are examples of good requirements specification documents. They were developped by last year students. However, they do not include API specifications.PROJECT DEADLINES
- Assignment 2 - October 23rd: First Requirements Document
- Assignment 3 - October 29th: Questionnaire
- Assignment 4 - November 13th: Revise requirements and API within the group
- Assignment 5 - December 19th: Final implementation, final requirements document
Slides
Exercises
Schedule
Day |
Time |
Room |
| Thurday | 10:00-11:00 | RZ F21 |
Assistant
Assistant |
Office |
Phone |
Language |
| Martin Nordio | RZ F9 | 044 632 02 97 | English |
| Roman Mitin | RZ H 22 | 044 632 72 90 | English |
Slides
Date |
Title |
| 18.09.2008 | Design by Contract |
| 25.09.2008 | Outsourcing your project to Russia |
Assignments
Title |
Deadline |
| Assignment 1 | 09.10.2008 |
| Assignment 2 | 23.10.2008 |
| Assignment 3 | 29.10.2008 |
| Assignment 4 | 13.11.2008 |
Last update: 2008-11-05