International Software & Productivity Engineering Institute Applying Pantomime and Reverse Engineering Techniques in Software Engineering Education Vladimir L Pavlov, Nikita Boyko, Alexander Babich, Oleksii Kuchaiev, Stanislav Busygin

Agenda 2 Challenges of teaching software engineeringEvolution of the P-Modeling Experience of using P-Modeling in software engineering education

Students’ Practical Experience Small Projects Easy to implement in university environment Students learn: Software Engineering methods create additional overhead – without them it would be more easy to complete the project If you want to finish your project faster, you code and then create (fake) all the documentation to meet “official” requirements Negative learning experience 3 Large Projects Hard to implement in university environment Students learn: Software Engineering methods create value – without them it would be more difficult to complete the project If you follow your SDLC, you finish your project faster and with less bugs Positive learning experience

“Dirty Tricks to Train Software Engineers” Give an inadequate specification Make sure all assumptions are wrong Have conflicting requirements and pressures Give additional tasks to disrupt the schedule Change the deadlines Crash the hardware... Ray Dawson “Twenty Dirty Tricks to Train Software Engineers”, Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Software Engineering, 2000, pp

SE2004 Curriculum designers must strike an appropriate balance between coverage of material, and flexibility to allow for innovation. The underlying and enduring principles of software engineering should be emphasized, rather than details of the latest or specific tools. In order to ensure that students embrace certain important ideas, care must be taken to motivate students by using interesting, concrete and convincing examples. Software engineering education in the 21st century needs to move beyond the lecture format: It is therefore important to encourage consideration of a variety of teaching and learning approaches. Important efficiencies and synergies can be achieved by designing curricula so that several types of knowledge are learned at the same time. 5

Evolution of P-Modeling 2001: Speechless modeling – will it work? 2003: Are “normal” teams performing better, than “speechless”? 2005: Can we use reverse engineering as a quality-control tool? 200X: ?-?-?-?-?-?-?-? 6

P-Modeling Session 7

Current Experience of Using P-Modeling Sessions in Universities Four universities in Ukraine/Russia Never a required part of curriculum always an option for students to choose an alternative activity usually 30%-50% of students choose to participate in a P-Modeling Session Around 200 participants so far undergraduates in their third, fourth or fifth year of studying Software Engineering or Computer Science 8

Feedback From Students 100% would want to participate in such events again and/or to organize such events in their professional practice in the future 100% would recommend attending such sessions to others 100% assess Reverse Semantic Traceability as an extremely powerful tool to validate software design and want to use it in their practical work in the future 93% of all participants consider Speechless Modeling a powerful tool for learning Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with UML 90% mentioned improving of their team working skills 71% of participants think that such sessions can help new team members to understand the domain area more quickly than traditional approach 52% said that Speechless sessions taught them to create more precise models more quickly 9

International Software & Productivity Engineering Institute Sample Assignment and Outcome of P-Modeling Session …. … are Available in the Article (see Conference Proceedings)

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Summary 12 Students need positive practical experience of applying software engineering methods Large projects in university environment? P-Modeling Sessions allow to get such an experience within one-day event Speechless Modeling Reverse Semantic Traceability Fantastic feedback from early adaptors and their students 6 years, 4 universities Talk to me / to start using P-Modeling in your university Easy to integrate into your curricula The technique still evolves – opportunity for joint research Invite your students to to explore UML boundaries They can win a laptop

International Software & Productivity Engineering Institute Backup Slides

INTSPEI P-Modeling Framework 14 The most important decisions (and most expensive mistakes) are done at the beginning of the project The initial amount of quality control is minimal and then grows as development moves forward. This results in a costly rework (often hidden) on the late stages of the project INTSPEI P-Modeling Framework addresses this problem. It enables to reduce delays between bug insertions and bug fixes Engineers start discovering and fixing critical mistakes virtually immediately - when introduced - not at the late phases where they are the most expensive to resolve Requirements Architecture Detailed Design Construction Maintenance Phase That a Defect is Corrected Phase That a Defect is Created Cost to Correct Cost to correct a defect greatly depends on how early it was introduced and revealed

Iterative Development

Traceability Management