Marcus Deininger

Teaching Software Project Management by Simulation-Experiences with a Comprehensive Model

Students of software engineering very rarely have the opportunity to gather experience in leading projects. This not only restricts their management skills, but also prevents them from learning about the project managers point of view. We consider this lack of experience a major flaw of software engineering education. In this paper, we describe an approach to educate software engineers by simulating a software project. Students became project leaders of our simulated project and had to finish this given project successfully. To reduce biases and obtain reproducible effects, we decided to use a simple, but quantitative mathematical model. This simple model turned out to be sufficient to an amazing extent: Many effects well-known from real projects arose during the simulation. The project managers made many characteristic errors which led to plausible project distortions. The evolution of the simulated projects provided valuable feedback to teachers and students. This model is one result of our long-term project SESAM.

SESAM - A Simulation System for Project Managers

Abstract Project management is an adventurous task: Just like an explorer making his way through foreign land, project managers have to be well-prepared and trained to reduce risks and turn the adventure into a foreseeable enterprise. For project manager training, we initiated SESAM (Software Engineering Simulation by Animated Models). SESAM is our software engineering research and education project; we simulate software projects as interactive adventure games. Trainees can playfully gain experiences and try different scenarios. SESAM comprises a modelling approach, a notation, and a programming system which supports model building, animation and validation. A first, simple simulation model has been used in a project management training course. The model turned out to be sufficient to an amazing extent: Many effects well-known from real projects arose during the simulation. The participants made many characteristic errors which led to plausible project distortions. The evolution of the simulated projects provided valuable feedback to teachers and participants.

Darstellung und Präsentation

Nachdem im funften Kapitel inhaltliche Aspekte des Berichts besprochen wurden, setzt sich der folgende Teil mit der Prasentation der Arbeit auseinanderl. Diese kann in Form eines schriftlichen Berichts oder eines Vortrags erfolgen, oft ist beides gefordert. Auf diesen Wegen stellt der Kandidat anderen seine Ergebnisse zur Verfugung.

Die Betreuung wissenschaftlicher Arbeiten

Alle wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten, die im Rahmen der Hochschulausbildung durchgefuhrt werden, mussen betreut werden. Wir konzentrieren uns hier wieder auf die Studien- und Diplomarbeiten.