Software engineering and outsourcing Dragan Jankovic Tatjana Stankovic Faculty of Electronic Engineering University of Nis, Serbia 8th Workshop "Software Engineering Education and Reverse Engineering“ - September 2008

Outlines  Outsourcing  Needed knowledge  SE knowledge  Theory versus practice  Questionnaire  Recommendations  Conclusion

Outsourcing  Definition  Kinds of outsourcing Realization team Kind of jobs Location Developer status

Realization team  Complete out – all developers are out of company  Shared-major – major part of developers is out of company  Shared-minor – minor part of developers is out of company  One-man show

Kind of job  Complete development  Subsystem development  Shared development

Location  Home  Office(s) shared with other developers  Another company offices (part time)  Company connected to the main company  Part of company (full time, part time)

Developers status  Full time  Part time Work for 2 or more companies  Software companies  Different kind of companies  On-line students

Outsourcing perspective in WECs  Knowledge - good  Culture – more less similar to Europe countries culture  Time zone – 1-2 hour for Europe; 6 hours for USA  Salary – depends of the region, between , sometime senior developer much more (1500 or more)

Needed knowledge  Programming languages  IDE (I ntegrated Developing Environments )  Debugging  Testing  Documentation writing  Organization  Time estimation  Collaborative work ( , video- conference, phone, meeting with company representative)

Software engineering knowledge  Software life cycle Vision Requirements Specification Design Programming Documentation Deployment Maintenance

Software development models  Waterfall  Incremental  Iterative  Boehm spiral model  Agile methodologies (eXtreme Programming)  RUP-Rational unified process  Microsoft  Etc.

Models in (outsourcing) practice  Models in practice Iterative Incremental eXtreme Programming

What is missing?  Theory versus practice  Theoretical knowledge demonstrated on examples  Problems: Exercises and labs very simple and time limited Projects realized by one or two students Students – not very interested in imaginary problems

Questionnaire  B.Sc. and M.Sc. working in outsourcing companies  Working experience – between 1 and 10 years  Different kind of outsourcing  Some of them have been working for different companies

Questions  Year of your graduation  Years (months) of your working experience (1-10)  What knowledge did you need right at the beginning of your career that you have not get during your studies? (Java, C#, Debugging…)  Do you think that programming language knowledge attained during your studies were enough? If not, quote knowledge that you think should be included in regular studies. (Web services, UML, JavaScript, …)  Do you find Software Engineering knowledge from the faculty usable in practice? (Yes, but not enough)  Would you change something and what? (Real projects, bigger teams…)  What software-developing methods are used in your company: Structured methods Data-oriented methods Object-oriented methods Formal methods (deals with mathematically based software engineering methods) Prototype methods (involves software prototyping)

Questions  Do you use knowledge taken from your studies related to the areas below (All the time/Sometimes/Never)? Algorithms and programming Data structures Databases Object Oriented programming Parallel programming  Do you find software testing knowledge you’ve got from your studies satisfactory? (No)  How much do you think this knowledge is necessary in every- day practice? (Much/Less/Not at all) (Much)  Do you find project management, software documenting and software developing life-cycle knowledge taken from regular studies satisfactory? (Software doc. More, pr.m. less, but not enough)  What would you change? (Lecturers experts, real world examples)

Questions  Are you satisfied with your project managers? (No)  Do project managers in your company use knowledge taken from their studies (according to your opinion)? (No)  For what software life-cycle activity have you taken the most information during your regular studies? (Code implementing)  And for what the least? (Requirements, testing, …)  How much are knowledge and theory related to software life- cycle and activities and the way of their implementation different from your every day practice experience?  What software life-cycle activities in practice have the biggest disagree with theory-knowledge you achieved from studies?

Outsourcing experience  Authors More than 10 years Different kinds of outsourcing Outsourcing for/in companies  RistanCase GMBH - Zurich, Switzerland  Siemens A.G. – Munich, Germany  Infineon A.G. - Munich, Germany  Accordia LLC – New York, USA  ABB, Baden, Switzerland  Colleagues

Recommendations  For University  For companies  For students

For University  More practical exercises  More practical labs  Modification of SE curricula  Practical works in groups  Project group size more than 5 students  Assistants with practical experiences  Projects in companies  Story from real life

For companies  It is not real to expect “yang ready full developer”  Learning period  Demonstration with courses and tutors  To offer including of students in real projects

For students  Force cooperation with assistants and professors  Force interactive lectures

Conclusion  Software engineering in our faculty gives very good experts, but there is place for improving  Experts as guest-lecturers should definitely be one of the improvements  The idea of the exception of investigation team at the university should be considered?

THANK YOU!