Investigation and Reporting

2018-01-04 Missing grades

Helge and Kasper is aware that the grades we have repported to wiseflow has not been made awailable for students. We do not know why, but will try to find a solution soon.

The short message is that all who handed in have passed.

As part of your PBA thesis, you must show you are able to

• systematically investigate an area you were not taught in class
• present your findings for others verbally and in writing
• and reflect on how your findings compare to the current industrial practice

This course is intended to get some practice in doing this before your thesis.

Structure of the course

The course falls in four main chunks - each of approximate 4 weeks:

• No work in this course
• A theoretical module
• A concrete investigation in the context of one of the other courses
• A dissemination module

Theory module

There are very many methods for investigating a new area of knowledge. We will look at the following as those are the ones typically used by PBA students:

• Literature study - knowing what is state of the art, what information should one trust, how have the results others report been verified to be correct
• Prototyping and proof of concept. What exactly does building a prototype tell you, and how do you document a prototype development process and evaluates the results you want to claim
• Code analysis - what can you claim about the quality of the code you build. How do one do a code review, what are the typical qualities one can look for. How do you measure performance.
• Qualitative interviews. How do you get the most out of asking just a few users (you will rarely have many). Observations and questionnaires can be useful.
• Self reflection. The internship ends with a internship report. That report is supposed to contain your reflections on the relationship between your studies and the practice of your internship.

Investigation

You will pick some topic of interest from one of the other courses and do a short investigation on a topic related to one of those courses.

Dissemination module

Now you have done your investigation, you need to tell others about it. We will look at three kinds of disseminations:

• Hand-over reports. You have now developed a piece of code, and others need to be able to take over.
• Extended blog entry. You have found some results from your investigation. Those results need to be written up as a blog entry for a technical blog.
• Oral - Many companies has a meeting series where different technical topics are discussed (or are part of networks if it is a small company). You must be able to present your work in a concise manner (15 min)

Exam

There is no final exam, but there are a number of activities in the dissemination module which constitute the exam.

You will work in groups of 3 students.

1. On December 11th. by 8:30 am, you hand in your blog entry.
   • The blog entry should be written as a github readme file, in a project which has no other purpose.
   • The blog entry should be three to four pages long.
   • The blog entry should discuss a topic from your LSD projects or SI projects.
   • You submit by making a link to your github in this google-sheet.
2. By December 13th at 8:30 am. After hand in, each group will read one other group report, and provide them with a written feedback (on a number of fixed criteria). The feedback is given as github issues.
   • You are assigned groups A, B, C,…, and you are assigned exams periods 1,2,3,…. Within each exam period those in the first group review those in the second, those in the second reviews the third, and the third reviews the first. For example, in exam period 3, there are members of groups B, E, and F. B reviews E, E reviews F, and F reviews B.
3. On December 14th, each group gives an oral presentation of the investigation and the results. This presentation is mandatory and graded passed/not passed.
   • We have allocated 10 minutes for presentation in a 2 person group, and 15 minutes for a 3 person group.
   • The critiquing group is then asked to present (orally, but no slides) their critique, and whether they field it has been addressed properly.
   • The passed not passed criteria is the quality and structure of the arguments, not the technical contents.
4. On December 21 23:59. Each group revise their blog entry, and hand-in at Wiseflow (update the readme files, and document all issues as closed).
   • In addition, Each group member will read one of the other blogs (you pick it yourself) and write 1-2 pages recommending one or two relevant piece of literature to the group. This recommendation should include the rationale for why it is relevant and how it supports or counter the results of that group.
   • You are free to pick which blog to comment on within your exam block.
   • The wiseflow handin is individual, and is the pdf file of your argued literature recommendation (we as teaches already have the link to your blog.)
5. Grades will be announced January 4th 2018, 23:59.

The grade will be given on the basis of the final hand-in, including the literature recommendations.

Reexam

1. You hand in a link to your blog entry on Wiseflow on Wednesday, Feb. 28th.
   • The blog entry should be written as a Readme.md file in a GitHub repository, which serves no other purpose.
   • The blog entry should be start with a four sentence “Kent Beck” abstract.
   • The blog entry should be three to four pages long.
   • The blog entry should investigate and discuss a topic from your LSD projects or SI projects. Alternatively, it can investigate and discuss a real-world software engineering problem, which you experienced in another project.
2. You hand in a PDF document with a review of on Wiseflow on Feb. 28th.
   • Each person reads one of the other blogs (you pick it yourself from the list of link at Google Docs)
   • Each person writes 1-2 pages recommending one or two relevant piece of literature to the reviewed group. This recommendation should include the rationale for why it is relevant and how it supports or counter the results of that other blog entry.
   • You are free to pick which blog to comment on within your exam block. The Wiseflow hand-in is individual, and is the PDF file of your argued literature recommendation (we as teaches already have the link to your blog.)
3. You com to the oral exam on Wednesday, March 7th in the morning.
   • You will give a ten minute presentation of your investigation.
   • Subsequently, Kasper and Helge discuss this with you.

The grade will be given on the basis of the hand-in, including the literature recommendations.