Title: 3 years experience in
13 years experience in Software project
management Mirjana Ivanovic, Zoran Putnik
2Introduction
- Originaly created in the winter 2005., through
DAAD support, during prof. Ivanovic 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
3Course 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 (?)
4Course 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 !!!
5Course 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.
6Course 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 didnt 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!
7Content 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
8Organization 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.
9Organization of Exercises
- 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.
10Organization of Exercises
- 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.
11Organization of Exercises
- 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.
12Organization of Exercises
- 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.
13Organization 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.
14Final Exam Results
- Results for the previous 3 years are as follows
- Not too much 10s, we admit!
- Yet, not too much 5s (5 is non-passable mark)
- P.S. All of the 5s from previous years, passed
the exam in the meantime.
15Students 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)
16Students Opinion Questionnaire
- 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
were working on some more advancements
17Students 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.
18Students Opinion Questionnaire
- 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 well have to consider this
problem.
19Students Opinion Questionnaire
- 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.
20Students Opinion Questionnaire
- 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
21Students Opinion Questionnaire
- 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
22Students Opinion Questionnaire
- 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
23Students Opinion Questionnaire
- 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.
24Lecturers Opinion about the course
- Positive
- 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
25Lecturers Opinion about the course
- Negative
- 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.
26Conclusion
- 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!
27Additional support to upgrade the course on SPM
- WUS Project and Textbook for
- Software project management
- Mirjana Ivanovic, Zoran Putnik
28WUS 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,
29WUS 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
30Teaching 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.
31Teaching Methodology
- 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 - the role of proper documentation throughout the
life of project and - the difference between managing and 'doing'.
32Teaching Methodology
- 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).
33Examining Methodology
-
- 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.
34Examining 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.
35WUS 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.
36Difficulties 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.
37Difficulties with courses
- 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.
38Difficulties with courses
- 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.
39WUS Project - Textbook
- 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.
40WUS Project - Textbook
- 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.
41WUS Project - Textbook
- 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
42WUS Project - Textbook
- 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 ?.
43WUS Project - Textbook
- 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.
44WUS Project - Textbook
- 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 ?!
45WUS 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!