Simulating Software Product Evolution

in the Classroom

 

May 3, 2001

 

The Western Canadian Conference on

Computing Education (WCCCE)

 

By

 

Kal Toth

Associate Professor

Technical University of British Columbia

Suite 301 - 10334 152A Street

Surrey, B.C. Canada, V3R 7P8

T: (604) 586-5286; F: (604) 586-5237

toth@techbc.ca

 

 

Abstract

 

One of the main challenges for software engineering and information technology instructors is to provide learners with a real-world environment for developing software products and systems.  Learners are often given toy problems to solve and rarely work on projects that involve integrating software components in a team or project setting.  This paper describes an innovative approach introduced by the author to provide learners with an environment that closely simulates an ongoing industrial software product development process.

 

The learning approach described in this paper is being implemented and evaluated for the first time in a second level software engineering course at the Technical University of British Columbia (TechBC).  It is based on the Personal Software Process (PSP) developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and documented in [1].  The author has developed a PSP Support Tool (“Zelda”) which supports the PSP approach providing learners with a loosely integrated set of capabilities supporting planning, estimating, time management, bug tracking, process management and software reuse activities.

 

The innovative aspect of this new method of teaching is that the IT learners become intimately involved in the ongoing evolution of the PSP support tool.  Learner assignments are explicitly geared to enhance the PSP tool itself.  New assignments further enhancing the tool will be allocated to future cohorts of learners thereby simulating a continuous software evolution process in the class. 

 

Subject Areas: Software Engineering; Personal Software Process (PSP); Team Software Process (TSP); Project Support Environments, Software Tools

 

Academic Department: Information Technology

 

 

1.    Introduction

In more recent years, computer science and information technology (IT) programs have begun to prepare learners with both theoretic and applied knowledge and skills prior to entering the workforce.  The term “software engineering” (SE) is often used when referring to the industrial practice of applying computers and software to solve, automate and support business and operational problems. 

 

Current academic programs often assign toy problems that provide insight into fundamentals, theories and structures, but they offer a limited degree of skills development or applied problem solving.  To develop applied knowledge, the challenge has been provide IT and SE students with practical project experience in systematic and continuous evolution of software and to achieve this in a project-oriented working environment.

 

The goal of this paper and the learning approach described herein is to provide an integrated project support environment in the classroom that closely simulates industry practice.  This environment is targeted at facilitating the full development lifecycle including planning, estimating, time management, bug tracking, requirements management, and process management.  A related goal is to integrate industry-oriented process thinking and process improvement into the IT curriculum.  Because industry practice includes collecting data / metrics about the software process to systematically improve processes, research data will become available to study the efficacy of the proposed approach.

 

 

2.                      Background

The author has long-time industry experience in the development of software-intensive systems and in recent years has developed and delivered several SE and IT courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels.  Of particular relevance has been his experience with the “Personal Software Process” (PSP) developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and Watts Humphrey [1].  The author currently conducts a second level (“Tech2”) Software Engineering course at the Technical University of British Columbia (TechBC) which is based on the PSP and also calls on material from Humphrey’s Team Software Process (TSP) [2].

 

The PSP introduces the learner to software engineering practices, process thinking and metrics.   The learner begins with their baseline process and is incrementally introduced to software sizing, estimating, planning, time tracking, bug/defect tracking, performance and quality metrics, and process improvement.  The course provides several lab assignments, some of them related to the estimating and reuse techniques advocated by the PSP, that provide the learner with an opportunity to practice the newly introduced SE practices just-in-time.

 

The PSP is also the foundation material for SEI and Humphrey’s Team Software Process (TSP) [2].  The TSP extends the processes at the personal level to software processes carried out by development teams.

 

One shortcoming of the PSP as presented in [1] is that it relies on paper-based forms.  Getting buy-in to complete these forms can be a challenge and they do not lend themselves readily to automated feedback and project control.  Industry practice typically involves adopting integrated project support environments to capture, control, aggregate and analyze data for the project.  To address these shortcomings, the author developed an automated PSP support tool (now called “Zelda”) to support the lab exercises. 

 

This tool is implemented in MS Access, runs as a stand-alone tools on a PC client, and provides several sub-tools (“widgets”) as follows:

 

Project Data

Effort / Time Logging

Requirements Specs

Bug / Defects Tracking

Process Scripts

Size and Effort Estimating

Productivity Database

Planning / Scheduling

Maintenance Functions

Reports / Listings

 

This support environment has been evolved over time by the author and has increasingly automated many of the previously manual processes and methods of the PSP.  Zelda will also be applicable at the team level (per the TSP), however, groupware enhancements need to be made to support development and integration across a project team.

 

Although the PSP assignment outputs are working programs related to the PSP processes, we are not aware of any attempting to integrate or reuse these outputs.

 

3.                      Approach

The approach advocated by the author was stimulated by the idea of feeding back learner output from programming assignments into the Tech2 Software Engineering course for subsequent offerings of the course.  The objective of this learner-centered strategy was to both simulate industry practice and continuously improve the course itself.

 

The central idea to achieve this has been to get the learners to both use Zelda (the PSP support tool) and participate actively in the evolution of the Zelda to achieve increasingly enhanced capabilities. 

 

This process was just launched this winter with the first offering of this course to second level learners.  The ongoing plan of action to achieve the desired results may be summarized as follows:

*    As the learners use Zelda, they are encouraged to not only post improvements to their personal processes (as advocated by the PSP), but to also propose changes / enhancements to the tool.  This achieves buy-in – shortcomings and bugs in Zelda will become opportunities for improvement rather than opportunities for complaining.

*    Learners and the instructor will review the proposed changes periodically and establish new assignments for subsequent offerings of the course designed to improve Zelda.

*    Each year a new set of assignments will be posted.  These new assignments are thereby driven by the process and product improvements proposed by the previous cohort.  The course also evolves dynamically and incorporates emerging SE methods and tools as they become available over time.

*    Just-in-time product and process changes will also be encouraged – assignments could possibly change mid-course.

*    As the course evolves, the instructor will evaluate the software components resulting from the new assignments and lead the incorporation of the enhancements into Zelda.  The strategy for conducting this re-integration effort has yet to be worked out, however, it could potentially be incorporated into as a final group assignment in the course or become an assignment for a third or 4rth level IT course at TechBC.

*    The author plans to put the software into the public domain via an open source license so that other learners, institutions, and companies conducting software development may benefit and/or contribute to the evolution of Zelda.

 

 

4.                      Contemplated Improvements

Some of the improvements that have already been contemplated include:

*    web-based development support using Java Applets to reduce dependency on client side tools like MS Access

*    development of a central repository using MySQL or MS SQL Server to capture project data

*    Enhanced requirements management including version control and traceability

*    Support for software integration and test management

*    Improved data capture in the effort and defect tracking widgets

*    Non-linear regression and other improvements in the estimating tool

*    More generalized planning and scheduling

*    More direct support for work breakdown

*    Ability to drill down into processes (move towards a process enactment capability).

 

5.                      New Challenges to Address

There are a number of issues and follow-on work that may be considered:

*    What would it involve to translate the metrics gathered in the class to generalize them to industrial applications?

*    What mechanisms might be employed to encourage learners to participate in the growth and value of the product in an academic environment?

*    Might it be possible to have the students share in the proceeds of the public domain tool?

 

6.                      Impacts on Learning

The proposed approach is expected to quite closely simulate an industrial approach to software engineering and process thinking thereby providing the learners with hands-on practical project experience in the evolutionary development of software intensive systems.  Learners will achieve an enhanced sense of accountability, teamwork, self-assessment, process improvement and professionalism, and the course itself will continue to improve over time.  The proposed approach potentially offers an industry-oriented test bed for gathering and analyzing various software processes that could lead to potential new approaches for undertaking and optimizing software engineering in the field. Finally, a practical and useful open source tool will be made available and continuously enhanced for application in both academic and industry settings.

 

References

 

1.       Humphrey, W. (1995). A Discipline for Software Engineering, Addison Wesley

2.       Humphrey, Watts S. (1999). Introduction to the Team Software Process, Addison Wesley

 

Kal Toth, Ph.D, P.Eng.

 

Kal has a Ph.D. in Computer Systems Engineering from Carleton University and has a software engineering designation with the professional engineering association in BC. He is both a faculty member at TechBC and a principal and cofounder of The Wise Net Inc.  He has long-time industry experience in the development of software-intensive systems and has also developed and delivered several SE and IT courses in recent years at the graduate and undergraduate levels at TechBC, UBC, SFU and the Software Productivity Centre (SPC).  Kal has been  a senior executive with several large, medium and small sized technology companies and organizations including Hughes Aircraft, Datalink Systems Inc., the CGI Group and Intellitech Canada Limited.