An industrial software project as a software engineering module at HU

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An industrial software project as a software
engineering module at HU

• Kay Schützler

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Structure of this presentation

• How the project started
• Organisation of the project and experience from
  winter semester 2004/2005
• Organisation of the project and experience from
  summer semester 2005
• Future

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How the project startedThe first meeting
I need some cheap programmers and future
employees...
Do you know a good student who is interested in
our new project?
Prof. Bothe
Mr Kirsten(from industry)
me
4
How the project startedThe first meeting
Dont expect too much of cheap programmers that
dont know your company!
Students are not easy to find, but Ive got an
idea A seminar on...
Prof. Bothe
Mr Kirsten(from industry)
me
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How the project startedThe first meeting
Finally Kay will do something meaningful
then... But how to manage...
Requirements Engineering! Get them to learn about
real life!
Prof. Bothe
Mr Kirsten(from industry)
me
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How the project startedThe first meeting
Perhaps we could do it like with XCTL Student
projects, Diploma theses, ...
Better this way, than no way...
Great idea! I could give you a short description
of the project by next week
Prof. Bothe
Mr Kirsten(from industry)
me
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How the project startedThe first meeting
?
Prof. Bothe
Mr Kirsten(from industry)
me
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Original aims of the project

• Introduction of students to a new domain
• Practice of requirements analysis methods
• Involvement in a real-life project
• Finding out good students
• Retrieving some interesting topics for diploma
  theses
• Establish a longer running cooperation

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Organisation of the project (winter semester
04/05)

• Meetings every two or three weeks at the
  institute
• Discussing all kinds of issues
• Presenting documents from industry and students
• Two meetings at the companys place
• Introduction to real life software development
  circumstances
• Central web and (later) CVS repository

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Screenshot of project web site (1)
Project Requirements Engineering for development
and production processes
Overview
Schedule
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Screenshot of project web site (2)
Project partner
Literature
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Project partner AEG netcontrol

• offers services and solutions for energy
  distribution and supply companies as well as for
  the industry

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Experience from project(after winter semester
04/05)

• Project aims changed significantly
• Results from three sub projects
• one quite successful,
• one quite unsuccessful,
• and one far away from good or bad
• Nevertheless cooperation considered a success
• Cooperation continued after joint analysis of
  projects goods and bads

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Change of project aims

• Initial idea at HU
• Show students real life (but at first only by
  analysing requirements in a real life
  environment)
• Industry
• Showed students real life unfortunately the
  hard way
• After short and rather incomplete requirements
  analysis a strong wish for implementation occurred

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Change of project aims

• Students
• Learned about real life
• Tried to implement something
• Had not enough stable requirements
• Had not as much time as expected
• Started a rebellion a few times
• Somehow managed their way through

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After this experienceHow to proceed? (Proceed
at all?)

• Despite all problems industry showed strong
  interest in continuing cooperation
• Quote "Only stupid ones make the same mistake
  more than once. Lets try to make some new
  mistakes next semester!"
• Another success two students from project
  started practical work (student projects) at the
  company
• Industry donated 5.000,- to our group

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Organisation of the project(summer semester 05)

• This time PURE requirements engineering
• Weekly meetings with the students
• Every first week with the customer for interviews
  on certain topics (use cases, test cases,
  non-functional requirements)
• Every second week without the customer to discuss
  students summaries of previous meeting

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Schedulein summersemester 05
Introduction
Collecting and discussing use cases
Collecting and discussing test cases
Summary
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Experience from project(after summer semester 05)

• Everything went better
• Stronger dedication of the project partner
• Students felt more comfortable in this more
  strictly organised form
• Developed several documents
• Put together ideas from each project participant
• Each document shows a different aspect of the
  software to be developed
• Cooperation considered a greater success

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Future

• Continue cooperation
• Find some interesting topics for diploma theses
• Getting more case studies from the industry