The software industry is more and more pressed towards fast time-to-market and short development cycles. Putting it in other words, if a piece of software is not finished at a certain point in time, it can have negative effects on the companies' performance. Given the fact that a team is limited to a certain number of people and can thus only build a product of a (relatively) fixed size, multiple teams have to collaborate and work on large software projects together. This, of course, leads to a certain overhead. In Software Engineering 2, you shall learn how to conduct software development in a multi-team setting. We want to prepare you for a situation where you are in a leading position and responsible for a large piece of software. Thus, you shall learn methods, concepts, and technologies that help you to deliver successfully large software in a multiple team setting. While still not on par with large enterprise projects, SWT2 is the only lecture in the curriculum that allows you to gain experience in a setting even larger than in the bachelor's project.
Learning experience
Participants will be forming teams of 5-8 people. All teams will work collaboratively on the same tasks, which is the requirements engineering, design, and implementation of a single application. We will teach you how to apply the Scrum methodology in a multi-team setting. If possible, teams will be formed according to the bachelor project assignments in order to leverage the existing infrastructure. In the course of the semester, you will conduct 4 sprints à 3 weeks. The project infrastructure relies almost entirely on freely available, open source solutions. The project is hosted on Github and will be available as an open-source project after the course closes. The theory taught in the lecture can be applied directly in the accompanying exercise. This course focuses more on the methods and concepts and less on the actual result. If the number of participants is too low (i.e. < 10 people), only a single development team will be formed and focus will shift towards scalability of the developed application.
Acceptance criteria
After this course, the following learning targets (LT) should be achieved.
LT 1: Scrum
As a student, I know the elements of Scrum and I am familiar with planning meetings, daily Scrums, sprint reviews, sprint retrospectives, and estimation meetings.
LT 2: Scrum in a multiple team setting
As a student, I know how I can scale Scrum with the help of Scrum-of-Scrums and planning-of-plannings.
LT 3: Behaviour-driven and test-driven development (BDD and TDD)
As a student, I know the advantages of BDD and TDD and I use both methods appropriately.
LT 4: Source code management (SCM) using Git
As a student, I know the different SCM concepts. In particular, I am familiar with Git while branching as well as merging became natural activities in my personal software development process.
LT 5: Continuous integration (CI)
As a student, I never want to develop software without CI again because, together with BDD and TDD, this gives me the assurance that my software is validated and that all tested functionality is correct.
LT 6: Ruby on Rails
As a student, I know the architecture and concepts of Ruby on Rails and can apply them to fulfill the requirements stated to my team and myself.
LT 7: Self-assessment with regards to your role in a team
As a student, I know how I can contribute to help my team performing as good as possible.
Grading
The final grading is determined by
- introductory Ruby on Rails exercise (no grade, completion mandatory),
- oral exam (30%, individual mark), if the number of participants is unexpectedly high, a written exam will replace the oral one.
- usage of presented methods and concepts such as Scrum, BDD, TDD, SCM, and CI (45%, team mark)
- software development results (25%, team mark)
- if work is not distributed equally amongst team members, individual adjustments of the marks are possible
