CSSE7034 Home Page
Predictable Professional Performance

School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering

The University of Queensland

Results for checking

Announcements

• [27/7/2011] Assignment 1 is out now. Please note the submission deadline (and also the extended deadline in the course profile).
• [1/8/2011] Assignment 2 is out now. Please note the submission deadline (and also the extended deadline in the course profile).
• [1/8/2011] Added link to a useful and concise external PSP resource here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/52515540/15/Competency-Area-3-Size-Measuring-and-Estimating
• [3/8/2011] Updated Assignment 2 link for Program 2 to now include the PIP and Test Report form templates.
• [4/8/2011] Checklist for Assignment 2 - what you need to complete and submit.
• [8/8/2011] Assignment 3 is out now. Note the submission deadlines as per usual, check the course profile for extended deadlines.
• [15/8/2011] Here is a concise summary of UML.
• [15/8/2011] Assignment 4 is out now - note this week there are 2 deliverables due, Program 4 and the checklists submission.
• [22/8/2011] The PSP Report and TSPi Cycle 1 and 2 Assignment forms are up - note to also download the Project Specification and PEER Review forms.
• [22/8/2011] There will be a tutorial this Thursday 25/8/2011 to cover the TSP Tools
• [30/8/2011] There will be no tutorial this Thursday 1/9/2011
• [30/8/2011] Confirmed Guest Lecture: Tuesday 13th Sep 8-9am in room 47A-141. Robert McKinnon is a manager a Accenture who has overseen 6 years of significant IT projects at the Australian Tax Office. He will be speaking about his experiences from project planning to handling problems that arise during project development. This is a good chance to ask an industry expert questions and get some insight into how one of the top 5 consulting companies manage their IT projects. I recommend students try to make the lecture if they can.
• [17/10/2011] We will have the final lecture in week 13 (on 24 October).
  
• [17/10/2011] The final report assignment is available for download.
• [24/10/2011] To help students identify the minimal requirements / what's expected for assignments the marking scheme for Cycle 2 and the final report are now available. Note if the assignment asks for something that is not specifically mentioned in the marking scheme it is best to still include it in your assignment submission as it might contribute toward marks for another item.

Course Profile

Lecturing Staff

Lecturer: Prof Xiaofang Zhou - Room 78-629, Phone: 3365-2989, email: zxf@uq.edu.au

Tutor: Dr Sham Prasher - Room 78-637, Phone: 3365-2988, email: s.prasher@uq.edu.au

General Course Information

Course Description

This course introduces students to the Personal Software Process (PSP), which can serve as the basis for software development process improvement in the organisation, as well as for helping individuals. It also introduces the Team Software Process (TSP), which is a process that enables teams of software engineers to work together better. TSP focuses on some disciplined approaches and strategies to deal with problems that regularly occur during team formations.

Assumed Background

Students are expected to have:

• some experience in software design and programming in Java,
• an interest in software process improvement, and
• a desire to improve the way in which they personally develop software.

Course Introduction

Many software products are developed in an ad-hoc fashion by developers using their own personal methods and techniques. This situation would be acceptable if it reliably produced software products of high quality, at or below the budgeted cost, and on or ahead of schedule. Sadly, this is not the case and the term “software crisis” was coined in the 1960s to capture the notion of chaotic (unpredictable) development. This so-called crisis has become chronic. A Standish Group survey of 8,000 software projects in 1995 found that:

•  the average project exceeds its planned budget by 90% and its schedule by 120%.
• 33% of all projects are over budget and late.
• 52.7% of projects will cost at least 189% of their original estimates.
• only 16.2% of projects will be completed on time, on budget.
• in large companies, only 9% of projects come in on time, on budget.
• the average time overrun is 222% of the original estimate.

Subsequent surveys by the Standish Group have revealed similar results with a slowly increasing proportion of projects completed on time and on budget (35% in 2006). While there have been improvements, software development is still considered to be inadequate, unreliable and lacking in the discipline associated with engineering and other comparable professional disciplines. As we increase the size and complexity of the problems we attempt, so the importance of our development process increases. This course aims to make students aware of the value of defined personal and team software processes and ways to improve their effectiveness.

Timetable

Timetables are available on mySI-net.

Aims, Objectives & Graduate Attributes

Course Aims

This course aims to:

• Demonstrate systematic approaches to software development based on the Personal Software Process^SM (PSP^SM) and the Team Software Process^SM (TSP^SM) developed by Watts Humphrey.
• Show students how to measure and analyse their personal software process.
• Reveal how process data can be used to improve software development performance.
• Provide students with experience of reflective and disciplined software development methods.

Learning Objectives

After successfully completing this course you should be able to:

1. Plan software development projects based on estimates of size, time involved and defects likely to be injected and removed.
2. Track software development projects by measuring the size of products, the time involved in their development and the defects injected and removed as part of their development.
3. Quantify software quality using the metrics defined in the PSP.
4. Improve your personal and team processes by reflection on past performance and analysis of measurement data to identify improvement opportunities.
5. Generate evidence of benchmark data and reflection outcomes on your personal software process.
6. Demonstrate personal and team skills relevant for software engineering projects.

Learning Resources

Required Resources

See course profile.

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