CS681 Software Engineering
Ethan Bolker
Fall, 2003
This is the home page for CS681-682-683, the MS capstone project
course in software engineering.
Introduction
A brief outline of my view of the course - essentially, notes for the
first class.
Class list
home pages and
email addresses for students enrolled in this class.
Class meetings
Fall: Tu, Th 14:30-15:45, 16:00-17:15, in room S-2-062
Spring: same time, probably same room
Fall Schedule
I will keep the one in
$CS681/fallSchedule.html
reasonably up to date. The schedule for project deliverables lives in
$CS681/deliverables/index.html.
Assignments
Projects
Here's some of our discussion about how
rated the potential projects when we decided to choose these four,
and how we created the teams.
One of the Fall term deliverables was to pitch the projects to
(pretend) venture capitalists. Here's the
assignment and outcome.
Project Deliverables
Texts
-
Frederick P Brooks, Jr.,
The Mythical Man-Month. Addison-Wesley,
1995. ISBN 0-201-83595 Paper. A classic text, updated; still valid.
-
Kent Beck,
Extreme Programming Explained - embrace
change. Addison-Wesley Publishing, Reading, Massachusetts, 2000. ISBN
0-201-61641-6 Paper. Close to what everyone does any way.
-
Martin Fowler.
Refactoring - Improving the Design of Existing
Code. Addison Wesley, 1999. ISBN 0-201-48567. A tool necessary to
extreme programming. Since this text was required for CS680 you should
already have it in your library.
-
Steve McConnell.
Rapid Development -- Taming Wild Software
Schedules. Microsoft Press, 1996. ISBN: 1556159005
Grading
A separate grade will be awarded for each of CS681, CS682 and CS
683.
Your grades for CS681 and CS683 will be based on a combination of the
work done by your group and your individual contribution to that
effort.
Your grade for CS682 will be based on your written
assignments, how you present yourself in your CV and your personal web
page, your participation in class and your examination results
(if there are examinations - I have not yet decided).
All of these matter. Although I will not assign specific percentages
to each of these items, you will not be able to earn an A unless you
do good work in all these areas.
I do understand that not everyone is an accomplished speaker, that
some of us find participating in discussions painful, and that English
is a second language for most of you.
Links
Finding me
My office is in S-3-179, behind the Department office. I will be in my
office Tuesday and Thursday when not in class, and usually on
Wednesday afternoons (unless
there's a meeting I need to go to) and other times I'll post in my
.plan.
I read and
respond to my
email (eb@cs.umb.edu) regularly.
My office phone is (617)287-6444. You can find my home phone on my
.plan. Please use it rarely (for emergencies) and not after 9 PM.
Accommodations
Section 504 of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 offers
guidelines for curriculum modifications and adaptations for students
with documented disabilities. If applicable, students may obtain
adaptation recommendations from the Ross Center for Disability
Services, M-1-401, (617-287-7430). The student must present these
recommendations and discuss them with each professor within a
reasonable period, preferably by the end of Drop/Add period.
Student Conduct
Students are required to adhere to the University Policy on Academic
Standards and Cheating, to the University Statement on Plagiarism and
the Documentation of Written Work, and to the
Code of Student Conduct
as delineated in the catalog of Undergraduate Programs, pp. 44-45, and
48-52. The Code is available online at
http://www.umb.edu/student_services/student_rights/code_conduct.html.
For my own elaboration on the rules concerning the acknowledgment of
intellectual debt, particularly appropriate in this course where the
focus is on teamwork, see
http://www.cs.umb.edu/~eb/honesty.html