The Development and trial of SEGWorld: A Virtual Environment for Software Engineering Student Group Projects Sarah Drummond & Cornelia Boldyreff Department of Computer Science Research Institute in Software Evolution

Research Institute in Software Evolution, Department of Computer Science 2 Content SEG (Software Engineering Group projects) Groupware support for SEG - a virtual environment So what is BSCW? –Problems and successes Open issues Summary

Research Institute in Software Evolution, Department of Computer Science 3 Software Engineering Group (SEG) philosophy Industrial-like conditions - hard deadlines, groups treated as “companies”, staff act as “customer”, weekly timesheets, IEEE standards, project support environment and tools Common project across all groups with associated SE practicals on common aspects - cost estimation, risk analysis, group organisation, project planning, configuration management, traceability, and introduction and providing groupware to support group work Project is technically challenging, but the emphasis on SEG is broader than the technical development of deliverables. Group working and management are key foci.

Research Institute in Software Evolution, Department of Computer Science 4 SEG projects at Durham Development of software through the phases of the software lifecycle 15 week duration Approx. 89 students = 14 groups of 6 or 7 One tutor/customer/consultant per group Strict deadlines for group deliverables at each phase.

Research Institute in Software Evolution, Department of Computer Science 5 Support for SEG Dedicated SEG collaborative working laboratory On-line SE/SEG work materials and tutorial “SEGWorld”Creation of a virtual environment for student group work “SEGWorld” based on BSCW (Basic Support for Cooperative Work)

Research Institute in Software Evolution, Department of Computer Science 6 What is BSCW? A document storage and retrieval system supporting work of widely dispersed groups Workspaces (public or private) contain a number of shared objects Actions can be performed on these objects by workspace members WWW interface Runs on UNIX (incl. Linux) and NT

Research Institute in Software Evolution, Department of Computer Science 7 BSCW supporting SEG Central repository Simple work-flow mechanism Awareness of other members activities (historical trail) Functionality to support some SE activities (document creation/editing/versioning) Practical experience of using groupware

Research Institute in Software Evolution, Department of Computer Science 8 Problems Initial motivation poor - lack of experience Inconsistent/non-use of functions BSCW does not take advantage of the multi-processor nature of our server? Poor response times of BSCW and unreliability has very recently resulted in a vote of no confidence by students.

Research Institute in Software Evolution, Department of Computer Science 9 Successes Provides a simple work-flow mechanism An awareness of group activities for both members and staff has proved very useful Students have gained valuable experience using groupware; can appreciate the design challenges in such systems Introduction of CSCW module in curriculum covering CSCW applied to SE

Research Institute in Software Evolution, Department of Computer Science 10 Open Issues Short-term maintenance requires support - both administrative and technical Long-term evolution requires committed management and sufficient resources to be allocated to the environment (both software and hardware) Do we carry on with BSCW?

Research Institute in Software Evolution, Department of Computer Science 11 Summary Have gained experience of using both synchronous and asynchronous groupware from local and distributed perspectives Use of groupware relatively successful but problems both technical and administrative have occurred and in some cases are still ongoing. Open issues need to be dealt with and problems resolved Students do gain valuable experience using these technologies

Research Institute in Software Evolution, Department of Computer Science 12 Further information SEG web pages: SEG and JTAP publications: BSCW: