Essays for TDT4235 Tor Stålhane IDI / NTNU

Intro The essay counts for 30 of the 100 points used to grade the students of this course The essay must be written as a group effort All the students in a group will get the same number of points The essay should preferably be written in English although essays written in Norwegian will also be accepted.

Formal requirements 10 – 12 pages plus title page, 12 points Times New Roman, double line spacing The essay must have –A front page with title and the names of all the group’s participants –Introduction, main section, discussion and conclusions –At least five references that are not URLs

Topics The following slides shows a set of possible essay topics. The first line of each topic shall be used as the essay’s title – also if the essay is written in Norwegian Each group must select one of the topics listed More than one group may select the same topic

Essay 1 Use of the TRL TRL – Technology Readiness Level – also called TRI – Technology Readiness Index – is used to assess technological products both for software and hardware. Is this a good way to assess new tools? Could the method be extended to also assess new methods and processes?

Essay 2 New tools – 1 Several SPI-gurus have bemoaned the fact that IT firms often buy tools for large amounts of money without collecting data to check if they really get their money’s worth out of it. Managers claim that the checking would a waste of resources. You buy the tool and start using it. If it works, that’s fine, otherwise just throw it away. Discuss these two ideas and make recommendations for small and large companies.

Essay 3 Ramp-up time for new tools and methods Changing anything – tools, methods, procedures – will often make things worse before they get better. The developers will need to know when things are supposed to get better so that they can accept or reject the change. How can we assess when things will get better and – if it takes too long – how can we speed up the process.

Essay 4 New tools – 2 There is a going tendency for companies to use open-source software tools for internal use. Pro: the tools are free and you can get support from a large, virtual community. Con: the lack of certification and support from a tool development or vendor company

Essay 5 Agile development and outsourcing Some people claim that agile development, with its focus on customer contact and cooperation, will stop or reduce the trend towards outsourcing large parts of the software development process. On the other hand, some companies have adopted both agile development and outsourcing. Discuss the effect outsourcing will have on agile development

Essay 6 Reliability vs. flexibility Several branches of the IT-industry claim that in the modern world changeability and flexibility are more important than reliability. The reasons for this is that The business environment is changing all the time. Those who lag behind will soon be out of business The life time of each version of a system is getting shorter and shorter The time needed to release a new version of a system on the web is almost negligible

Scoring scheme AreaComments Max score Score Originality9 Challenges9 Methods6 Presentation6 Sum30

Plagiarism means that you publish other people's work as your own. is regarded as cheating and is strictly forbidden. results in you failing your paper and that you may be expelled from the university for a longer or shorter period. It is not allowed to either copy from books, articles, nor to use the “cut and paste” method with electronic resources (e-books, electronic articles, the Internet, etc) without writing where you found the information, that is - referring to the source.

Deadline for exercises All exercises will have a deadline for delivery. This deadline may only be exceeded after agreement with the course responsible – lecturer teaching assistant If no such agreement exists, we will deduct 3 points on the grade for any obligatory exercise for each week it is delayed.