Seminar in Software Engineering, HS 10

Today software development is typically a team effort with team members in different geographical places working together across organizational boundaries, in different time zones using tools and technologies to collaborate. In this seminar, we address the issue of distribution and collaboration for teams that work in such software development projects. Technologies such as Jazz by IBM or VSTS by Microsoft are two examples of technologies aimed at supporting such team efforts.

The following list shows a list of the possible topics for the seminar.

The proceedings of the International Conference on Global Software Engineering are the perfect point for the research (they can also be valuable to get an idea of the subject when choosing the topics).

Please pick two preferences send them by email (including your full name and student ID/Matrikel-Nr.) to Giacomo Ghezzi by the deadline specified below. Based on those preferences, we will then assign the topics to students.

Please note that the number of topics has been increased due to the number of participants.

Topics List

• Methods, Tools and Environments for Collaborative Development: requirements engineering, design, coding, verification, testing and maintenance
• Empirical studies on Distributed Development and lessons learned
• Software Processes for Distributed Development (planned, agile etc)
• Managing distributed software development: planning, team building, project and SLA management, managing diversity, measurements and evaluation
• Communication, coordination and collaboration
• Knowledge management in distributed development
• Getting started with global software engineering
• Human behaviors in distributed development environments

Here are all the seminar deadlines:

For the final grade we will take into account the written report, the presentation of the report, the reviewing of the other participants' work and the active participation in the lectures.

Written Report

The written report represents the first task of the seminar. It has to be 12-15 pages long (not counting the cover sheet and the table of contents) and in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) proceedings format. Both the MS Word ("word.zip") and LaTeX templates ("llncs2e.zip") are available here for downloading, even though we strongly suggest anyone to use LaTeX. Eventually the report will have to be delivered as PDF.

Please pay attention to the tips in the format template, in particular:

• the correct structure of a scientific research article,
• the right use of figures and tables,
• the correct citation of other works.

Below you can find a scientific research paper you can use as a blueprint while writing your report. For any other question or doubt please contact the teaching assistant.

Example for a Research Paper (PDF, 256 KB)

Literature Search

Each student should investigate and cite at least 7-10 articles in his/her own work.

The ACM Digital Library, IEEE Digital Library, Citeseer and Google Scholar are very good online catalogues for technical literature search. Both the ACM and the IEEE publications can be downloaded for free from within the University of Zurich domain.

Review

The report of each student goes through a first review phase, done by the teaching assistant and 2-3 other students. The goal of this first reviews is to give some useful feedback on the report, which should then be improved and modified accordingly.

The reviews take the following criteria into account:

• Technical quality (critical analysis of the topic)
• Logical structure (the structuring of the work)
• Presentation (the use of graphics and tables)
• Style (orthography and typos)
• References (significant selection of relevant literature)

Each category is graded on an A to D scale:

• A: An excellent work.
• B: A good work with just a couple of small weaknesses.
• C: An average work with clear weaknesses.
• D: Insufficient work with many substantial weaknesses.

Every participant has to review two other participants' reports. The whole reviewing process (the reports and their subsequent reviews submission) will be done through the EasyChair online platform. An email with all the necessary instructions will be sent after the seminar kick-off.

Delivery

The delivery website (EasyChair) can be found at http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=seminarse10.

You have to create a new user account and then you can easily upload your report with the appropriate menu option.

Presentation Day

All the participants will present their work on a special Presentation Day (TBA)

Every presentation consists in a 20 minutes talk followed by a 10 minutes discussion.

All the participants need to have the presentation in electronic format (MS Powerpoint, Apple Keynote or slides in PDF/PS). We provide both a beamer and a laptop to be used (in case you don't want to use your own laptop).

Attendance to all the presentations is mandatory. Exceptions are made only if a proper, official excuse (e.g. doctor's excuse note) is given.