Software Hut Lab Pack

© Copyright University of Sheffield, Chris Thomson and Mike Holcombe 2002-2009

Software Hut Lab Pack Chris Thomson, Mike Holcombe Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, Regent Court, 211 Portobello, Sheffield S1 4DP

[email protected], [email protected] This lab pack for the Software Hut is to accompany the paper “The Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory Archive: Six Years of Empirical Data Collected from 73 Complete Projects” [1] although it maybe cited by other papers. The lab pack contains various resources that will assist in understanding our research environment and in replicating it. The resources maybe updated from time to time. We have published a range of results that we have obtained from the Software Hut data [1]. Several papers that describe in detail various elements of the course. They are cited against the descriptions of the documents in the pack below. We have provided the following materials for experimenters aiming to replicate our results in their own environment. The lab pack is currently based on materials that we used in 2007-8. The zip of the files can be downloaded from: http://www.shef.ac.uk/dcs/research/publications/memoranda.html General 1. Managers record sheet. Every week a manager who is external to the development team should interview the team and ensure they are making good progress. The aim is to ensure the team don’t make any really bad decisions, but decisions should not be made for the team. 2. This sheet should be given to the students as it explains how the course will be run and their marks awarded. The schedule will need to be adjusted depending on the times the course is run. 3. A typical meeting schedule, a two hour slot was used when all the teams met their client and manager for a set period of time [2, 3]. 4. A hand out to tell the students what is expected of them on the course [1, 4, 5]. Lectures Several presentations are provided which formed the basis of the main lectures to introduce important topics. In particular we note that the teams had little or no exposure to XP prior to this course [6, 7]. 1. A lecture to orientate the students at the start of the course. 2. A lecture about testing, and test first. 3. A presentation about using our management tool [8]. 4. A lecture about how to use X-Machines as a design and testing method [9-12]. 5. A lecture about how to package up a project to send it to a client. 6. An introduction to XP - hand outs 7. A lecture to orientate the students at the start of the course (from 2006) 8. Introduction to XP - slides 9. A lecture to orientate the students at the start of the course (from 2007) 10. Introduction to XP (from 2007) 11. A lecture to orientate the students at the start of the course. (2008) 12. A refresher lecture on requirements documents

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© Copyright University of Sheffield, Chris Thomson and Mike Holcombe 2002-2009 Surveys We performed some standard surveys on the students to profile teams. 1. Issued at the end of the course and examined this survey asks the students to reflect on important accomplishments, and serves to highlight how the division of labour occurred within the team. Acknowledgements The “Software Hut” was the consequence of many years work by many staff at the University Of Sheffield. Including Andrew Stratton, Doug Lewin, Helen Parker, Bhavnidhi Kalra, Sharifah Syed-Abdullah, Francisco Macias, Peter Croll, Stephen Wood, Tony Cowling, Marian Gheorghe, George Michaelides, John Karn, Phil McMinn, Steven Murphy, Stan Price, Daniela Romano, Liang Huang, Ali Mresa, Tony Simons and Kirill Bogdanov. This work was partially supported by an EPSRC grant: EP/D031516 - the Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory. Copyright and Licence All the resources in the lab pack remain the copyright of the authors, the University of Sheffield, Chris Thomson and Mike Holcombe 2009. We grant a licence for the free reproduction of these resources within state funded academic institutions on condition that any resulting research acknowledges our work and references appropriate papers that we have published. Requests for other uses will be entertained by the authors via email. This lab pack can be cited directly with the following citation: Thomson, C. and Holcombe, M. (2009) Software Hut Lab Pack. Technical Report CS-09-03, Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. References [1] C. Thomson and M. Holcombe, "The Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory Archive: Six Years of Empirical Data Collected from 73 Complete Projects," Technical Report CS-09-03, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, 2009. [2] C. Thomson, "The Sourcerer's apprentice," University of Sheffield, SOLAR 2004. [3] C. Thomson, "Professionalism in the first year of a software engineering curriculum," University of Sheffield, SOLAR 2005. [4] M. Holcombe and H. Parker, "Keeping our Clients Happy: Myths and Management Issues in 'Client-led' Student Software projects," Computer Science Education, vol. 9, pp. 230-241, 1999. [5] M. Holcombe, A. Stratton, S. Fincher, and G. Griffiths, "Projects in the computing curriculum," in the Project98 workshop, 1998. [6] M. Holcombe, Running an Agile Software Development Project: Wiley, 2008. [7] M. Holcombe, M. Gheorghe, and F. Macias, "Teaching XP for real: Some initial observations and plans," in 2nd International Conference on Extreme Programming and Flexible Processes in Software Engineering (XP2001), 2001, pp. 14-17.

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© Copyright University of Sheffield, Chris Thomson and Mike Holcombe 2002-2009 [8]

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C. Thomson, A. Corbett, and M. Holcombe, "Managing Inquiry Based Learning: Learning from Experience," in Learning Through Enquiry Alliance (LTEA) Conference, 2008. C. Thomson, "Defining and Describing Change Events in Software Development Projects," Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, 2007. C. Thomson and M. Holcombe, "A Design Change Metric Derived From Extreme X-Machines," in 3rd South-East European Workshop on Formal Methods, 2007. C. Thomson and W. Holcombe, "Applying XP Ideas Formally: The Story Card and Extreme X-Machines," in 1st South-East European Workshop on Formal Methods, 2003, pp. 57-71. C. Thomson and W. Holcombe, "Using a formal method to model software design in XP projects," in 2nd South-East European Workshop on Formal Methods, 2005.

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