Guest lecture on large-scale testing
Lecture on Open Day and Presentations
Possibility to revise peer assessmentThe Student Handbook describes the organisation of this module in detail. Everyone must read this very carefully!
Additionally, you need to read the TSG Group Project pages. They both provide some very useful general advice, and give details on practical aspects such as equipment requests and procedures for handing in reports and source code.
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The Professional and Quality Issues (PQI) part of the module is based on the book Professional Issues in Information Technology [Bot05] by Frank Bott, which is recommended reading. |
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The book Projects in Computing and Information Systems: A Student's Guide [Daw05] by Christian W. Dawson discusses various aspects of carrying out a project, such as planning, risk management, basic software engineering issues, and presentation. It adopts a student's perspective (whereas many other books on software projects focus on large-scale, industrial projects), and it contains information relevant both for group projects and individual projects. While it is not covered directly in any of the lectures, it would be worth to have a look at it for some concrete advice on how to manage student projects, and as background reading for the (guest) lectures on project management. |
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I highly recommend the book Version Control with Subversion [CSFP08] by Ben Collins-Sussman, Brian W. Fitzpatrick, and C. Michael Pilato if you are going to use Subversion, or even to just get an understanding of what version control systems are, and why they are useful. The book is very well written and it can both be bought if you want a hard copy or downloaded for free. And yes, I do recommend that you use a version control system! |
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The book BUGS in Writing: A Guide to Debugging Your Prose [Dup98] by Lyn Dupré provides plenty of concrete and useful advice on how to improve various aspects of your writing. It focuses specifically on technical and scientific writing, with many examples from Computer Science. It is also very enjoyable to read. Not only useful in the context of the group project, but also for other report writing such as your individual dissertations and almost certainly also later in your professional careers. |
| Task | Date or Deadline |
|---|---|
| Equipment requests | TBA |
| Interim reports due | Friday 4 December 2009 |
| Final reports due | Thursday 1 April 2010 |
| Open Day | Wednesday 5 May 2010 |
| Presentation Day | Friday 7 May 2010 |
This lecture overview is preliminary.
| Lecture# | Date | Content | Speaker(s) | Slides | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 25 Sep | Overview: Aims, Organisation, Assessment | Dr. Nilsson | On-screen Printing (4 up) | Student Handbook |
| 2 | 2 Oct | Team Working and Group meetings | Dr. Nilsson | On-screen Printing (4 up) | Student Handbook |
| -- | 9 Oct | No lecture! | |||
| 3 | 16 Oct | Version Cotrol with Subversion | Dr. Nilsson | On-screen Printing (4 up) | [CSFP08, ch. 1 - 5] |
| 4 | 27 Nov | Guest lecture: Project Management: How to Deliver? | Jezz J. Kelway, IBM | Slides (PowerPoint) | |
| 5 | 12 Feb | Report Writing and Peer Marking | Dr. Nilsson | On-screen Printing (4 up) | [Dup98] |
| 6 |
5 Mar | Enterprise-level Testing: Breaking Software for a Living | May Glover Gunn, IBM | Slides (PDF) | |
| 7 |
26 Mar | Giving an Effective Presentation
Group Project Open Day | Professor David Brailsford Dr. Steve Bagley |
Guest lectures
27 November: Project Management: How to Deliver?
In this lecture, Jezz J. Kelway, IBM, will provide a brief insight into the role of a Project Manager within a corporate structure, reviewing some of the challenges with a focus on delivering a product.
Jezz Kelway is the Consumability Tooling Programme Manager in the IBM Java Technology Centre. His current role is to Project Manage the delivery of specialised tooling for IBM's Java Virtual Machine. Jezz has been working at IBM for 15 years and has enjoyed a career including technical roles within Development, Test and Service areas before taking project Management roles for JVM Service Releases and, more recently, Java Consumability Tooling.
5 March: Enterprise-level Testing: Breaking Software for a Living
In this lecture, May Glover Gunn from IBM will talk about testing with an emphasis on large-scale software systems in a commercial setting. She will cover the different types of testing and why testing is important, with real-world examples of what can go wrong when a system is not tested effectively. She will then move on to talk about software testing in a commercial environment, including information on designing a test strategy, writing tests, automation, and useful tools.
May is a software engineer in the Java Technology Centre at IBM Hursley Laboratories. During her seven years working for IBM she has had a variety of roles including System Test and Customer Support for the IBM Software Development Kit (SDK) for Java. Her years of experience as a tester have taught her how to think like a customer, argue her case with developers and most importantly, how to break software effectively.
There are two major components to the mark each student will be awarded. First, each group is awarded a collective mark on the standard university scale, with the different aspects of the project contributing according to the following table:
| Group Task | Date or Deadline | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Interim group report | Friday 4 December 2009 | 20% |
| Final group report | Thursday 1 April 2010 | 30% |
| Software | Thursday 1 April 2010 | 20% |
| Open Day | Wednesday 5 May 2010 | 15% |
| Presentation Day | Friday 7 May 2010 | 15% |
Peer assessment is then employed to distribute this collective mark among the group members according to merit as perceived by the group members themselves, such that the average of the individual marks for the group work equals the assigned collective group mark.
Note that the initial peer assessment is submitted as part of the individual
reports. However, if necessary a student
can revisehis or her assessment of one or
more of his or her peers one time until the end of the Presentation Day
(Friday 7 May 2010), thus making it possible to also take peer performance
during the final preparations for and at the Open and Presentation Days into
account. See the Student
Handbook for further details on when revising peer assessment is
permissible and the actual procedure.
Each student also has to submit an individual report, also marked on the standard university scale:
| Individual Task | Deadline |
|---|---|
| Individual report | Thursday 1 April 2010 |
These two components are weighed together into a final mark according to the following table:
| Component | Weight |
|---|---|
| Individual mark for group work | 80% |
| Individual report | 20% |
Each deliverable should be handed in no later than 3:30 pm on the due date. See the handbook for further details on assessment, how to submit, and details on the requirements for the various reports.
Details to be announced. Meanwhile, here is a link to a page illustrating what the Open Day 2008-2009 (6 May 2009) was like.
Details to be announced.
Like last few of years, two Prizes are going to be awarded. We are very happy that IBM this year kindly has agreed to sponsor one of the prizes. Both prizes are going to be presented at an awards ceremony at the end of the Open Day.
The first prize is the IBM Group Project Prize. This prize is awarded to the second year group project team that is judged to have produced the best project in terms of what was achieved overall, how robust and usable the delivered system is, and how well it has been documented. Of course, it's virtually certain that anything scoring well on all these criteria will have been produced by a very well-coordinated team. This is a cash prize of £50 for each member of the winning team.
The second prize is the School of CS Open Day Prize. This prize is awarded to the second year group project team that is judged to have staged the "best stall" during the Open Day. This is also a cash prize of £50 for each member of the winning team. It has been made available thanks to the Head of School, Prof. Steve Benford.
The prizes are awarded by the Group Project Awards Committee (GPAC). The GPAC members are:
The awards ceremony will take place at the end of the Open Day.
If you are not in a group but think you should be, please contact the module convenor Henrik Nilsson as soon as possible. In particular, if you are an incoming exchange student, or if G52GRP was not among your preliminary module choices, and you have not yet told the convenor, you are unlikely to be in a group.
Similarly, if it becomes clear that some names have been added to groups in error, please let the module convenor know as soon as possible.
Links to project descriptions for group projects from some earlier years for reference: