ms project in a course software project management

Humboldt University Berlin, University of Novi Sad, University of Plovdiv,University of Skopje, University of Belgrade, University of Niš, University of Kragujevac,

University of Zagreb, University of Timisoara, University of Tirana, University of Sarajevo,University of Banja Luka, University of Rijeka, Polytechnic University Tirana

DAAD Project“Joint Course on Software Engineering”

3 years experience in “Software project management”

Mirjana Ivanović, Zoran Putnik

DAAD project „Joint Course on Software Engineering“ © 2/45

Introduction

Originaly created in the winter 2005., through DAAD support, during prof. Ivanović stay in Berlin

Course was presented since the schoolyear 2005/06, for the third time this year

Course is held during the VIII (last) semester, 2 hrs lecture, 1 hr exercises


Course Organization

During the year 2005, there was 14 students. The course was obligatory, for a program “Business

Informatics”, which at the time was our smallest group.

During the year 2006, there was 14 “official” students, enrolled into “Business Informatics” program.

Yet – we had a significant number of volunteers – 7 students concluded that course could be useful for them.

Based on experience and advice from the previous generation (?)


Course Organization

During the year 2006, one important decision was made concerning this course:• In a new curriculum, adjusted to Bologna declaration, this course

became “elective” course.

With still relatively small number of students enrolled in “Business Informatics”, there was a possibility … a threat maybe, that there will be no students!

During the year 2007, there was again (our lucky number) 14 students, who chose to listen to this course

Based on experience and advice from the previous generations !!!


Course Organization

According to Bologna declaration, a course in Software Project Management has continuous assessment:• Maximal number of points is 100

• Students can gain up to 12 points for attending the classes;

• Students must perform one practical project (which will be explained in more details later) where they can earn up to 18 points;

• Students have 3 tests during the semester, each one worth 10 points, for a total of 30 points.


Course Organization

According to Bologna declaration, a course in Software Project Management has continuous assessment:• Maximal number of points is 100

• Finally, at the end of the semester, students have oral exam, where they earn a portion of the remaining 40 points.

• For those who didn’t attend, failed, or are not satisfied with their result on some of the tests, at the end of the semester there is a one time offer to fix their marks, when they can repeat their tests!


Content of Course Lectures

The course consists of the following lectures:• Introduction • General overview of PM BOK• IT management• CMM and process improvement • Cost estimation and COCOMO • Software measurement and metrics• Planning (+Exercise)• Using tools - Microsoft project (+Exercise)• Ethical issues (+Exercise)• Human resources and management


Organization of Exercises

The course is in practice divided vertically, and not horizontally – in other words, exercises are organized on-the-need bases.

At the beginning, students were introduced to the body-of-knowledge for the subject, so there was nothing to practice on.

Later on, professor and assistant held alternating lectures/exercises – depending on the subject taught.

The first “real” exercises were held in connection with the “Planning” topic.



The topic of “Planning” was organized as follows:• 3-hour class of theory about planning in general

• 3-hour exercise class presenting abilities of MS Project software. This exercise included presentation of several representative examples

• 3-hour exercise class presenting one real-life problem, management of a (software) project of “Organization of a scientific conference”, which is to be solved by students, as a part of the exam.



Several things were given to students in order to help them solving this assignment:• Written material “how conferences are organized in a

real life”.

• Document listing a set of use-cases for all of the activities in connection with the conference organization.

• Requirements specification for a potential software that would help conference organization.



Course “Software Project Management”, same as the most of the courses held by the members of our chair, has a support from eLearning system Moodle.

• Since we are using Moodle for several years now, all of the students who applied for this course already used Moodle system for some of the courses, and have the appropriate knowledge.

• The most important parts of MS Project Help system were translated, adjusted, and transformed into a Moodle eLesson.



Still, to be honest, the great majority of students, at their homes, already have:• computer, • installed Moodle system,• installed MS Project software.

So, in practice, the most of the students finished their work on the project at home, submitted it electronically, by e-mail, and (after a couple of iterations) received enough points to pass that part of the exam.


Organization of Exercises The second real set of exercises was held on a

topic of ethics.

• Again, this part of the course started with 3-hour class of “Introduction to Computer Ethics”

• Next, a 3-hour “discussion exercise” was held – 10 situations from a programmers real or imaginary life were presented to the students.

• Stories were read and discussed during a class, each new one receiving bigger and better reception and response.


Final Exam Results Results for the previous 3 years are as follows:

Not too much 10’s, we admit! Yet, not too much 5’s

(5 is non-passable mark)

P.S. All of the 5’s from previous years, passed the exam in the meantime.

2005 2006 200710 39 3 5 58 8 2 47 1 1 16 25 2 3 2

Total 14 14 14

Final exam resultsSchoolyear

Mark


Students Opinion – Questionnaire

Effort: Attendance 5 - 100% 1 - 20% Post-processing [lectures] Hours

Post-processing [assignments] Hours

Students attended 50% of the lectures on the average, and it took them 1.7 hour post-processing time for lectures and the assignments. (2005)

….. more than 80% …. 2.7 hours! (2006)

Stabilization – again 80% … this time 2.6 hours. (2007)



Contents: Amount of knowledge 5 - Too much 1- Too few Contents 5 - Too easy 1 - Too difficult Course well structured 5 - Very well 1 – Unstructured

Students assessed that they received (2005)• “perfect amount” of knowledge, (3,00)• “almost perfect” content, (3,20)• but the structure of the course was just “average”. (2,86)

Almost the same! (2006). The only difference was the improvement in the structure (it was 3,20).

2007: “Amount” and “Content” are again around perfect. The structure improved a bit more (3,33) but we’re working on some

more advancements


Students Opinion – Questionnaire Needed pre-knowledge?:

After a three year of almost repeated answers by students, we can conclude that in general:

• No pre-knowledge is needed, or as students usually say, “a little bit of everything”, “experience” …,

• Earlier mentioned “Software Engineering” pre-knowledge needed is not a problem any more – SE course finished in winter semester, while SPM starts in summer semester, and

• The only “pre-knowledge” really needed for about 40% of students (each year!) is “English language”.



Which topics in Serbian?:

• Percent of students thinking that they need slides in Serbian is still relatively high, but not as high as it was last year.

• All students have two courses in English – basic, and advanced. Yet, it was veeery long ago (2 years), or even longer for those who are studying a bit longer that needed

• We are still working on slides improvements, but it seems that we’ll have to consider this “problem”.



Style of the lectures: According to the questionnaire, we improved on almost every issue:

Mark (last years) Wanted mark Lecturer familiar 4.20 (4.1, 4.0) 5 Lectures well prepared 4.20 (4.1, 3.5) 5 Lecturer engaged 4.10 (4.1, 3.6) 5 Willingness to answer students' questions 4.70 (4.5, 4.9) 5 Presentation 4.60 (4.5, 4.7) 3 Presentation style encourage to follow the lecture 3.20 (3.0, 2.9) 5

Remarks: • Last year, we had one interesting idea: “… some of the lectures should be given to

students – that would be more interesting and engaging …”• This year, we exercised this idea. Yes, it was interesting, engaging, and useful.



Using media • Amount of info on 5 - Very well 1 - Not so much slides adequate • Slides well structured 5 - Very well 1 - Not so much

and clearly organized

For the first year, marks were not that great: 3.13 and 3.29

For the second year, after some improvements, marks were significantly higher: 4.50 and 3.90

This year, we managed to keep the same level:• Amount of info adequate 4.50• Slides well structured and organized 4.00



Assignments: • Difficulty 5 -Too high 1 -Too low • Motivating 5 -Very much 1 -Not so much

Similar with the assignments:• The first year 2.36 and 3.14• The second year 3.14 and 3.29

This year:• “difficulty to solve” 3.75• “motivating” 3.40



Benefit of the course: • New things learned 5 – Much 1 -Not so much • Contents useful 5 –Completely 1 -Not so much • Overall rank of the course 5 - Very well 1 - Bad

Average marks for a course improved:• Year: 2005 2006 2007• New things learned 3.25 4.00 4.00 • Contents useful 3.75 3.70 3.80

• Overall rank 3.83 4.10 4.00



Remarks:• Overall comments of the course, for the year (2005) were:

- “Everything OK. Everything according to curriculum. Good and useful. Very useful”, but also:

- “Pure theory, not connected to real life. Lack of practical lessons evident. Not connected to students’ experiences (?)”

• The next year (2006), comments were:- “Ethical issues and Human resources – interesting and very

important”

• This year (2007), reading between the lines of students’ comments it can be noticed that they are either:

- very satisfied with very useful material, or - do not see why they needed any of this stuff at all.


Lecturer’s Opinion about the coursePositive Material, and topics covered are good and

representative

Used slides are of acceptable quality, they converge towards the final version

Additional topics are prepared in parallel, that might be included during the following years:• Risk management, • Agile project management, • Methodologies of Software Project Management, etc


Lecturer’s Opinion about the courseNegative Slides are prepared using a lot of different sources – some

further refinement is still needed.

Slides are generally of a static structure, with a bit too much text. Introduction of some animation and graphics would be useful.

Also, further deeper readings and involvement in the whole material would be useful, same as the introduction of other software tools for PM and SPM.


Conclusion We are still working on a course upgrading, so some

additional support would be appreciated.

Further improvement of topics and material is needed/expected/on the way.

Results of students questionnaire show continual improvements. Of course, there is still place for additional advancements.

Our permanent problem(s) still exist:• We work on better and more student-oriented organization of

practical work and exercises. Tough job!• We would love very much to have a chance to put students to

work in a real environment. Not possible, yet!


Additional support to upgrade the course on SPM

WUS Project and Textbook for“Software project management”

Mirjana Ivanović, Zoran Putnik


WUS Project One year project that was supposed to help the modification

and upgrade of the existing course

What we have promised:• The course will cover the following topics (the order will be influenced

by the order of practical assignments): - Introduction to project management- Communications management- Software process models - Deeper coverage of some software process models - Quality of software development process and its standardization- Project management processes according to PMBOK and life-

cycle processes- Assessment procedures: ISO, SPICE, PSP, TSP, CMM, SPICE,

…


WUS Project - Before

What we have promised:• The course will cover the following topics (the order will

be influenced by the order of practical assignments): - Project management: Feasibility study, Cost estimation

and COCOMO model, Risk analysis, Tracking (tools, metrics, …)

- Methodologies of Software Project Management: RUP, Prince, ...

- Software process metrics- Maintenance and maintenance metrics- Advanced topics in Professional Responsibilities and

Computer Ethics


Teaching Methodology

Lectures will be supported by animated, multimedia ‚power-point' slides.

Handouts for these slides will be delivered to students after the lecture.

We also plan to write and publish a textbook for the course.


During practical exercises students (divided into teams) will 'simulate' the real-world process of managing the software project.

During the life of the project teams would exchange roles in order to better appreciate: a) the role of proper documentation throughout the life of

project and b) the difference between managing and 'doing'.



Complete teaching material • copies of presented slides, • text of practical assignments, • documents produced by students groups

will be available on the web-site (after the presentation of certain lectures).



Constant review of practical work done during

practical exercises (work on the project.) This will be conducted continuously during the semester.

Short tests on theoretical aspects taught during the lectures.

Examining Methodology


Discussion on documents and solutions

produced during the work on the project.

Oral exam covering topics taught during lectures, at the end of the semester - for the students unsatisfied with a grade acquired throughout the semester.

Examining Methodology


WUS Project - Textbook

For the last several years, the most often mentioned objection given by students for courses that are product of DAAD JCSE project was

lack of a textbook

Both “Software Engineering” and “Software Project Management” courses had PowerPoint presentations prepared and available to students after each of the topics is presented.


Difficulties with courses

Besides, each year we progress with usage of e-Learning facilities at our Department.

Everything started 3 years ago with Moodle e-Learning system used as a repository of teaching material.

Step by step, every year, more and more of teaching material is transformed into much more than just a simple PDF file for reading.



Cooperation between lecturers and students – within a course “E-Learning”, which will be presented with much more details during the workshop – helped this transformation.

Courses existing on “lower” years, attended by higher number of students, had enough candidates to be completely, or almost completely converted into e-Learning lessons.



Even “Software Engineering”, course for the 4th year students, had enough students that it is almost completely available in a form of electronic lessons.

The only problematic course left was “Software Project Management” – as mentioned, presented for 3 years, with a total of 42 students.

Definitely not enough help from students to transform it.



WUS foundation offers several things as a part of their projects:• Support for course development

• Support for provision of literature

• Support for (small) travel expenses

• Support for purchase of hardware (exceptionally), and

• Support for textbook publishing.



From a list of topics we were covering in our course, we picked a set that we will include in our textbook:

• Lack of time prevented us from covering all of topics, and

• We wanted book to be more than a textbook, we wanted it to be a reading material interesting both for our students, and for others involved in (software) project management.



Topics covered in our textbook are:• Introduction to project management,• Software project management,• Planning of project activities and phases,• MS Project,• An example of MS Project usage for project planning,• Capability Maturity Model,• Cost estimation for software project,• Human resources management,• Ethical questions within SPM



Textbook has about 230 pages, little bit more than 120 pictures, and around 25 tables.

Literature used in preparation of this textbook consisted of both books purchased as a part of this same WUS project, and of user manuals for MS Project software.

Since we had a chance to pick literature ourselves, those were a very nice and up-to-date books .



To the greatest pleasure of our students – WUS project has one additional requirement for project members.

In order to be financed by WUS, textbook must be presented to students, as a gift .

All they must do is write down their name and dossier number, and book belongs to them.



It was their first experience of this type, so they were very pleased.

As one important consequence, for the first time in 3 years, we had a positive response from students in our questionnaires about the textbook!

Finally !


WUS Project - Conclusion

Even though WUS project is a very small sized project – only 3 participants, very small amount of funds – it was of a significant help to us.

• We managed to purchase a nice set of modern, contemporary books on a subject,

• We forced ourselves to work more on improvement of our slides,

• We managed to write and publish a textbook for our students.

Quite enough from such a “small” project!

ms project in a course software project management

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