Piyush Maheshwari, on 20 May 2005, wrote:

> Other agenda items
> ==================
> I am not necessarily convinced of the change of Project Management to
> 6uoc.  That's partly because I am not convinced that we know what
> should be in the Project Management course; no criticism of Piyush
> intended.  I think we know that the Jack Straw version last year
> didn't work, and I don't believe that it was only because of the load.
> I am tending to prefer a project management course for SE that is 3uoc
> and which could key into one of the workshops.  Real estate in our
> programs is scarce and we should be looking for synergy rather than
> having each course have its own project component.

Jack Knight's version of COMP3710 (04s2 offering) was not that bad,
except that in his agenda, the main focus was on the project management
for professional services (in a consulting environment). That offering
had good lecture content, material and project planning guidelines,
but lacked in software-centric case studies. Based on his experience, the
examples were mostly coming out of construction/civil engineering
style of projects. Students did only project planning  (workplan 
development)
on self-chosen hypothetical projects (not necessarily software-based
projects). As these projects were not executed (not enough time in
one semester), there was no dynamics of project execution and control.

The major challenges for improving the course are:
 - to relate it to software-based case studies ... which should
   not be difficult to pick from some literature as reported
   by practitioners.
 - to apply PM techniques on students' reasonably-sized software
   (or computer) systems projects such as Thesis A (but this is
   in Fourth Year) or COMP3111 project
 - to teach how (project) quality is interwoven into the approach,
   and how to gather, manage and use the quality metrics for real
   projects. This is the hardest part to teach and practice in a course
   like COMP3710 as the projects are not real and time constraints
   are only for one semester.

This can be well supported in monitoring a year long project
such as first do project planning in Thesis A, and then monitor and
manage the project in its execution phase in Thesis B. In previous
years, this is where Jack Knight claims that his course was very
successful when offered to Final Year Electrical Engineering students.
Other matured (Ph.D.) students also like his PM guidelines and
sheets for planning their research projects.

I still find it hard how this can be taught (maybe 'theory' only as
a 3uoc course!) in the Second Year curriculum. As our SE students
go through the several workshops, it would make sense to
practice and apply PM concepts in SENG3010 and SENG3020,
but for that, as Ken says, the concepts should be first covered in a
Second Year course.

I suggest two options.

Option 1:
As all CE and SE students do their project/thesis in Fourth Year,
ideally a project management course makes sense in the Fourth Year,
Semester 1. Students can do planning for Thesis A in S1 and be assessed
on that planning part, and then after executing their projects in
Thesis B, they can be further assessed on the remaining part. So,
the major teaching would happen in Semester 1 of Fourth Year, but
assessment would be spread out in two semesters, and full course
results shall be delivered only after completing Thesis A and Thesis B.
Note that the technical aspects and supervison of Thesis A+B will be
handled by individual academic supervisors. In fact, a supervisor
can play the role of a project director.

Option 2:
Split the course in two 3uoc courses. Offer "COMP3710-Part 1"
in Second Year, Semester 2 where most concepts and a minor
project planning exercise should be covered. Then, offer
"COMP3710-Part 2" in Third Year by linking it (as a major
assessment item) to monitor, execute and control the project
for a serious software project (in SENG 3011/3020 for SE students
or COMP3111 for CE students). The course cordinators for
SENG3010 and COMP3111 will carry on with their usual
programming assignments or projects, but the course coordinator
for "COMP3710-Part 2" shall aim to develop an assessment item to
monitor the project progress of such programming-based
assignments and how student-groups record, apply and practice
the PM techniques and control their project to its success.

---Piyush