3rd Academy for Software Engineering Educators & Trainers
ASEE&T 2008
April 14, 2008
Keynote Speakers
Using Software Project Courses to Integrate Education and Research
Research on software process is often difficult because it may take
several years to evaluate the effect of a given process improvement
hypothesis. It has become even more difficult with the advent of the
"Net" generation of software engineering, as many external changes are
going on during the evaluation period. For software process research,
student project courses are the software engineering equivalent of the
fruit fly, in that many trials can be run more quickly, projects are
relatively more stable, and longitudinal changes can be tracked across
multiple years.
Over the past 10 years of teaching a 2-semester, real-client team
project course with roughly 20 projects per year, we have had 9 PhD
students complete their dissertations based partly on experiments
performed in the project class. These have covered such topics as
requirements negotiation, formalizing informal requirements,
architecture analysis, COTS integration, cost estimation, quality
factor analysis, security analysis, risk analysis, pair programming
vs. inspections, and value-based review processes. Four more students
are currently performing research on wiki-based tools, software
sizing, software maintenance, and use of new process models.
The talk will summarize our experience in balancing the research and
education objectives including such issues as grading, learning, and
assignment fairness; avoiding confounding effects of multiple
experiments; instrumentation and data validity checking; avoiding
threats to experimental validity; generalizing across different
project types; using human subjects in experiments; and addressing
effects of changes within and across annual course offerings.
Overall, performing the research has helped us significantly in
keeping the course's educational experience tuned to new developments
in software engineering.
About the Speaker
Barry Boehm received his B.A. degree from Harvard in 1957, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from UCLA in 1961 and 1964, all in Mathematics. Between 1989 and 1992, he served within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) as Director of the DARPA Information Science and Technology Office, and as Director of the DDR&E Software and Computer Technology Office. He worked at TRW from 1973 to 1989, culminating as Chief Scientist of the Defense Systems Group, and at the Rand Corporation from 1959 to 1973, culminating as Head of the Information Sciences Department. He was a Programmer-Analyst at General Dynamics between 1955 and 1959.
His current research interests include software process modeling, software requirements engineering, software architectures, software metrics and cost models, software engineering environments, and knowledge-based software engineering. His contributions to the field include the Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO), the Spiral Model of the software process, the Theory W (win-win) approach to software management and requirements determination and two advanced software engineering environments: the TRW Software Productivity System and Quantum Leap Environment.
He has served on the board of several scientific journals, including the
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, IEEE Computer,
IEEE Software, ACM Computing Reviews, Automated Software
Engineering, Software Process, and Information and Software Technology. He has served as Chair of the AIAA Technical Committee on Computer Systems, Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Software Engineering, and as a member of the Governing Board of the IEEE Computer Society. He currently serves as Chair of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board's Information Technology Panel, and Chair of the Board of Visitors for the CMU Software Engineering Institute.
His honors and awards include Guest Lecturer of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1970), the AIAA Information Systems Award (1979), the J.D. Warnier Prize for Excellence in Information Sciences (1984), the ISPA Freiman Award for Parametric Analysis (1988), the NSIA Grace Murray Hopper Award (1989), the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Excellence (1992), the ASQC Lifetime Achievement Award (1994), and the ACM Distinguished Research Award in Software Engineering (1997). He is an AIAA Fellow, an ACM Fellow, an IEEE Fellow, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Speaker website
Software Models and Measures: The Goal Question Metric Approach
The topic taken for my lecture will be software measurement,
specifically the Goal/ Question/ Metric Approach. The lecture will
motivate the importance of models and measurement as a means of
abstracting properties of software products and processes, focusing on
the study of particular specific properties, and as a feedback
mechanism. It will cover what, why and how we build models and measure
in the software engineering domain. It will show different applications
of the GQM goal template, e.g., to specify processes and review and
evaluate empirical research papers.
About the Speaker
Dr. Victor R. Basili is a Professor of Computer Science at the
University of Maryland, College Park. He holds a PH.D. in Computer
Science from the University of Texas, Austin and is a recipient of two
honorary from the University of Sannio, Italy (2004) and the University
of Kaiserslautern, Germany (2005). He was Director of the Fraunhofer
Center for Experimental Software Engineering – Maryland and a director
of the Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL) at NASA/GSFC. He works on
measuring, evaluating, and improving the software development process
and product.
Dr. Basili is a recipient of several awards including a 1989 NASA Group
Achievement Awards, the 2000 Outstanding Research Award from ACM
SIGSOFT, and the 2003 Harlan Mills Award for the IEEE Computer Society,
and the Fraunhofer Medal. He has authored over 250 journal and refereed
conference papers, has served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE TSE and the
Springer Journal of Empirical Software Engineering. He is an IEEE and
ACM Fellow.
Speaker website
Practical Agile Practices
Agile is becoming increasingly popular and there are good reasons for
it's adoption. But how can you extract concrete practices from this
movement and use them today? We'll first take a look at the Agile
Manifesto to see where it all started, then dive into test automation
strategies, see how Continuous Integration can run these tests as
needed, and finally the Peer Code Review for both code quality and
knowledge transfer. This techniques can be used to build solid software
in the classroom today and in industry after graduation.
About the Speaker
Jared Richardson, founder of the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina,
Agile Users Group and co-author of "Ship It! A Practical Guide to
Successful Software Projects," has been in the industry for more than
fifteen years as a consultant, developer, tester, and manager. He speaks
all over the United States as a regular at various software conferences.
Until recently, he was an independent consultant focused on helping
teams build better software but is now a full-time Agile Coach at 6th
Sense Analytics. Jared can be found online at AgileArtisans.com and
6sa.com/blog.
Speaker website
Empirical Studies - A Means of Classroom Instruction
Software development is an empirical task by nature. We
motivate usage of innovative methods via data regarding their
effectiveness, control method adherence via data, and learn
from successes and failures. Other engineering disciplines
combine "doing" and "feedback" in order to motivate the use of
effective engineering methods. This same approach is needed in
our discipline. This talk will sketch my lecture on empirical
methods,
but more than that will provide an overview of classroom
experiments
I am using to make students adopt basic engineering principles
based on self-experience. Some of the experiments are packaged
for reuse by other lecturers.
About the Speaker
Prof. Dr. Dieter Rombach studied mathematics and computer science at the universities
of Karlsruhe and Kaiserslautern. Since 1992, he has held the chair for Software Engineering
at the University of Kaiserslautern, and since 1996, he has been Executive Director of
the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering in Kaiserslautern (FhG IESE).
From 1984-1991, he was Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland,
and from 1986-1991 he was Project Manager at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.
Prof. Rombach's main research topics can be found in the area of "Software Engineering",
especially in methods for developing software with predictable quality, in quantitative
methods for measuring and assessing software products and software processes, in languages
and methods for developing and using explicit software process models, in process-based
software development environments as well as in software reuse. As a consultant, he works
for various U.S. American and European companies.
In 1990, Prof. Rombach received the "Presidential Young Investigator Award" from the National
Science Foundation (USA) "in recognition of his successful work in the area of Experimental
Software Engineering". For his exceptional services rendered to the state of Rhineland-Palatinate
and his exemplary commitment to the good of society, he received the Order of Merit of the
state of Rhineland-Palatinate in late 2000. Effective 1 January 2003, Prof. Rombach was
appointed Fellow of the American Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
in recognition of his achievements in the area of Experimental Software Engineering.
Speaker website