School of CSE - Details Needed for New Course Proposal

Course Title: Industrial Software Development

Proposer: John Plaice

Rationale

Why is the new course being proposed?

There is no course taught in CSE where students are forced to build
deliverable softwared, with full automatic testing suites.

What are the academic objectives?

To teach them how to build deliverable software, mastering all of the
tools that are considered standard for producing free and open-source
software.

Which programs/stage does it serve?

This course could be taken from 3rd year on, in any program.
It could also  be included in any of the Coursework Masters programs.

Why can the same objectives not be achieved with existing courses?

In theory, this stuff might be taught in COMP 2041/9041, but the
students have too little maturity and too few programming skills
when doing those courses to be able to master software delivery.

How does the proposed course relate to other courses?

This is the course that I would hope students took before starting
SENG 3010/3020.

What overlap is there?

None.

If there is any overlap, why is this justified/not a problem?


Stakeholders and Consultation

Who are the potential stakeholders, who was consulted about the
proposal (inside the School as well as outside), what was the
result of that consultation?

The proposal was informally discussed with Paul Compton and with
Boualem Benatallah.  Both were very supportive of the idea.


Enrolment Impacts

Likely enrolment (with justification), and impact on enrolments of
other courses.

I don't know.

Justification of Prerequisites (or lack thereof)

Prerequisites should be 2 years of programming.

Any Courses this is Replacing, and Why?

None

Delivery and Assessment

Weekly lectures, with tutorials.

Anything noteworthy about delivery mode, assessment (with justification).

Assessment will all be done automatically, with very stringent requirements
for submission.  Apart from scripting languages, main programming language
will be C++.


Handbook Entry

Introduction to delivery of large software systems.  Use of industrial tools
for maintaining the code base and for producing quality portable, deliverable code.
Methods for producing systematic test suites.

Textbooks/References

Manuals for GNU and other free software tools.

Syllabus

Indicative syllabus / overview of contents (at a level of detail
well beyond that of the handbook entry)

multiple-author configuration management
autoconf/automake
building distributions
building unit test suites
building regression test suites
use of external libraries
writing portable code
and so on.

Effect on School Resources:

1. Who is proposed to teach the proposed new course,
   and what impact would this have on their planned/current allocation?

John Plaice.  Currently teaching SENG 3010 and SENG 3020.
Would likely continue with these courses.

2. What sort of tutorial component is proposed, if any?

Weekly tutorials, corresponding to the content of the week.

3. What is the likely impact on lab utilisation (this relates
   to assignment and project work as well as scheduled labs?

Standard, with one major asssignment, with several partial submissions.

4. Any other resource needs? E.g. special print/disk quota, access to
   servers, access to special machines, special labs.

Standard.