Philippe Saliou

Software engineering support activities for very small entities

The emerging ISO/IEC 29110 standard Lifecycle profiles for Very Small Entities has at its core a Management and Engineering Guides which is targeted at very small entity (enterprise, organization, department or project) having up to 25 people, to assist them unlock the potential benefits of using standards which are specifically designed to address there needs. The developers of the standard, ISO/IEC JCT1/SC7 Working Group 24 (WG24), recommend the use of pilot projects as a mean to trial the adoption of the new International standard in small organisations. Accordingly an ISO/IEC 29110 pilot project has been established between the Software Engineering group of Brest University and a 14 person company with the aim of establishing an engineering discipline for a new web-based project. This paper details the lessons learned from the pilot project and based on our experiences with using ISO/IEC 29110 we identify a potential deficiency and accordingly propose new process area, “Infrastructure and Support” for include in the future evolution of ISO/IEC 29110 Process Profiles.

Experience Management for Very Small Entities: Improving the Copy-Paste Model

The emerging ISO/IEC 29110 standard Lifecycle profiles for Very Small Entities is developing a “Generic” profile group applicable to a vast majority of very small entities (enterprises, organizations, departments or projects) having up to 25 people, that do not develop critical software and have typical situational factors. The developers of the standard, ISO/IEC JCT1/SC7 Working Group 24, recommended the use of pilot projects as a mean to trial the adoption of the new International standard in small organizations. Accordingly an ISO/IEC 29110 pilot project has been established between the Software Engineering group of Brest University and a 14-person company with the aim of establishing an engineering discipline for a new web-based project. As the project proceeded, it became apparent that the current set of ISO/IEC 29110 documents describing a first profile, the Basic profile, was not sufficient to sustain this VSE in its SE activities. What was needed was to organize the knowledge contained in them. The results of this pilot study are providing VSEs with a simple Experience Management system which is compatible with the emerging ISO/IEC 29110 standard. It is founded on two principles: 1) keeping the Content Management System-based Experience Management infrastructure as simple as possible, structured with the decomposition of the ISO/IEC 29110 processes, and 2) the requirement of Experience Management dedicated processes, taken from D. Schön’s work on the reflection-on-action approach to learning.

Using a Semantic Wiki for Documentation Management in Very Small Projects

The emerging ISO/IEC 29110 standard Lifecycle profiles for Very Small Entities is targeted at very small entity (VSE) having up to 25 people, to assist them unlock the potential benefits of using software engineering standards. VSEs may use semantic web technologies to improve documentation management infrastructure and processes. We proposed to use a semantic wiki for documentation management based on an identification scheme inspired from an IFLA proposition called Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records. The document identification scheme allows documents to be managed by the internal resource management of the semantic wiki, hence benefiting from a straightforward but powerful version control. With few inputs of semantic annotations by VSE employees - through usable semantic forms and templates, the semantic wiki acts as a library catalog, and users can find, identify, select, obtain, and navigate resources.

TOWARDS AN ABILITY MODEL FOR SOFTWARE ENGINEERING APPRENTICESHIP

Abstract Despite recent efforts to improve the effectiveness of software engineering education, most approaches do not equip students with non-technical skills and fail to be practice-oriented. Brest University provides the software engineering by immersion paradigm as an alternative to other education systems. Shifting to the constructivism paradigm as far as possible, this education system is entirely based on a 7-month project, performed by a 6-students team within a virtual company and tutored by an experienced software engineer. The ISO/IEC 12207 standard is a reference framework of software engineering processes. This standard provides the basis of our reference decomposition into processes/activities/tasks and apprenticeship scenes. Issued from professional didactics, the analysis of activity distinguishes two kind of activity: productive and constructive. The former is work-oriented while the latter helps the actor to improve his/her own practice. Hence, constructive activity is apprenticeship and personal development. Analysing apprenticeship scenes provides an ability model of our immersion system. The model is defined in terms of its constituent competencies areas, each of which is further defined in terms of its constituent competencies families; a family corresponding to an activity of the reference decomposition. Each family is associated with a set of cohesive abilities. The ability model establishes a structure that directly supports the personal and team construction process of the knowledge and skills required to practice engineering of a software project. Each student periodically fills this structure while auto-analysing the tasks performed and him/her achievement level with the abilities defined in the model. This periodic inventory is supported by eCompas, a tool intended to manage development, assessment and value-added of competencies over the course of a curriculum or a professional career.

Relating ICT Competencies with Personality Types

ICT competency frameworks establish the definition of competences required and deployed by ICT professionals. Job profiles articulate competencies together with an organization needs, objectives and constraints. The evolution of the software industry impacts personality trends in the profession. This work-in-progress studies the relationship between competencies, profiles and personality types.

The cost of problem-based learning: An example in information systems engineering

High-quality education helps in finding a job - but student skills heterogeneity and student reluctance to move towards a professional attitude are important barriers to employability. We re-engineered some of the technical courses of a Masters in software development using a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) approach. Although initial results are encouraging, the cost of using PBL must be taken into account. Two aspects are particularly expensive: (i) set-up of the software development practicum, a mid-sized information system and its environment; (ii) screenwriting of problem-based learning scenarios, including procurement of input artefacts.

Introducing Problem-Based Learning in a Joint Masters Degree: Offshoring Information Technologies

A young offshore software industry has grown up in Morocco. The University of Brest has set up a network of major software companies and Moroccan universities, providing two mobility schemes towards France. Both schemes include a final internship on the French side of global companies, with pre-employment on the Moroccan side—a successful internship being the key that opens the door to recruitment. Student heterogeneity, and student reluctance to move towards a professional attitude are important barriers to employability. Hence, we redesigned a significant proportion of our technical courses to use a problem-based learning (PBL) approach. The PBL approach is illustrated through drawing parallels with the production of a TV series. Three aspects of the approach are presented: (1) set-up of the studio in which sessions are run, i.e. a real software project, its work products and its software development environment; (2) pre-production tasks including the screenwriting of problem-based learning scenarios and the procurement of input artefacts; and (3) acting, i.e. students’ interpretation of characters (roles) and teacher direction.

Building an Observatory of Course-of-Action in Software Engineering: towards a Link between ISO/IEC Software Engineering standards and a Reflective Practice

As a help to compete in an evolving market, small software companies may use an observatory of their course-of-action. The course of action considers the observable aspect of the actor’s activity. Its analysis provides a description of actors’ activity and it can express recommendations concerning both the individual situations and the collective situation. The observatory is an articulated set of data collecting methods supported with semantic wikis and a dedicated application. A case study, based on the activity of a team of 6 young software engineers, depicts some aspects of the building and the filling of the course-of-action observatory. As primary results of this work, we may think that observing and analyzing software engineer’s activity help to reveal his/her theory-in-use – what governs engineers’ behavior and tends to be tacit structures – That may help engineers to establish links between “Project Processes-in-use” and a simplified Process Reference Model and contribute to reduce the fit between a project-in-action and espoused SE standards.