Improving Project Planning/Tracking for Student Software Engineering Projects through SOPPTS Jeff Zhang, Dolores Zage, Wayne Zage Computer Science Department Ball State University Muncie, IN 47306 USA jzhang@cs.bsu.edu; dmz@cs.bsu.edu; wmz@cs.bsu.edu Abstract The Student Online Project Planning and Tracking System, SOPPTS, is an online system designed and implemented to enhance the communication avenues and the project planning/tracking requirements of student projects for the Ball State University (BSU) software engineering classes. This paper presents the design and assessment of this tool. SOPPTS has been designed and field-tested to provide real-time feedback from faculty on student project progress, to offer online guidance for project planning and to produce automated tracking of student projects. The tool assessment included interviews of both students at the undergraduate and graduate level and faculty. The interview was a set of specific questions chosen to document each participant s experience and impressions of utilizing SOPPTS. Data evaluation consisted of compiling the reoccurring themes during the interview process. The major themes that emerged are the increased efficiency in developing, recording and tracking of student project plans, the visibility and immediate accessibility of this information and the improved and timely communication among the student team members, faculty and client partners. With the improved access to information and facilitated communication through SOPPTS, the project planning and tracking skills for the software development teams improved. Moreover, the informal aspects of team communication and synergy, factors that can be as important as the technical aspects, were enhanced. 1. Introduction In order to deliver any project of magnitude successfully and on time, good project management is a necessity. This is especially true in software development. Project planning, scheduling and tracking are important activities of project management [8]. These skills are introduced in the software engineering classes at Ball State University. For these classes, students form software development teams that develop a complete software system starting with the requirements and ending with final delivery, including all documentation, to a customer or client-partner. Not only must these students satisfy the requirements for the course, they must also satisfy the requirements of their client partner. After the acceptance of a project, each student team composes a list of software development tasks. A team leader assigns tasks to team members. Each student on the team prepares a weekly progress report. The faculty and student teams communicate about the project s progress through these weekly reports and the project deliverables that are handed in at assigned times. The reports and deliverables are reviewed by the faculty mentor and returned to the team members with comments and suggestions. Most importantly, faculty must be sure that teams are meeting their schedule and quality targets. A critical part of project planning is to itemize the tasks, develop an initial schedule and assign team members as needed to accomplish those tasks. As development progresses it is
important to monitor the completion of those tasks, to review the associated products and to determine if changes, alternative plans, or reassignments are required. Since the projects are team-oriented, it is essential that a synergy develop among team members to complete tasks and also between the faculty mentor and student team members for advice and insight into client and project issues. The issues listed above gave rise to the inception of Student Online Project Planning and Tracking System, SOPPTS. SOPPTS was designed for the online learning environment, which makes it an accessible tool for the educational environment. The use of a web-based system for project management can improve visibility into a project s progress status and provides a timely management alert capability [3]. SOPPTS provides students with project planning and guidance technology to help them plan and track their software projects online, and incorporates a feedback mechanism for faculty guidance. 2. Our approach to designing SOPPTS The purposes of this study were to design and evaluate an online system that enhances the communication and project tracking skills of the computer science students at BSU. This system should be similar to those found in industrial settings that the students may find themselves in after graduation. Even though the first targeted user-group was members from a computer science department, the system was intended not only to address the needs in the software engineering classes, but also to provide BSU with a tool that can be useful in many other disciplines that employ student team projects in the curriculum. Therefore, SOPPTS needed to be flexible to handle the various project scenarios and intuitive to accommodate different user profiles. 3. An overview of SOPPTS technology For the design of SOPPTS, choices for both the Web server software and the database management system (DBMS) were carefully considered. Microsoft Access 2000 was chosen as the DBMS. Internet Information Server (IIS) and the Active Server Pages (ASP) were selected as the server-based technology. 4. Structure of SOPPTS From the SOPPTS homepage (http://www.cs.bsu.edu/gwen/soppts), the four main sections, Register, Profile Update, Team Project Management and Forum can be accessed. Each of the sections serves a unique purpose and provides its own functionality. Register and Profile Update are designed for SOPPTS administration. The Register section allows new users to complete the registration process. The Profile Update section displays the current profile of the logged-in user and the editing of the profile. The Team Project management section is the main portal to the activities and information for team planning and tracking. The Forum section is the electronic SOPPTS project bulletin board. Some of major functionalities in these sections will be discussed below. 4.1 Team Project Management Two categories of SOPPTS users are first, the student team members plus the client partners and secondly, the faculty mentors. Student team members and client partners are responsible
for their team plan and have access to only their team s project information. Faculty mentors are responsible for assigning the SOPPTS users to teams. Faculty also must be able to view all of the team plans and their progress (See Figures 1 and 2). The Team Project Management section allows a SOPPTS registered faculty member to create a team and to update or assign registered SOPPTS users to a team. 4.2 Student Team Project Management Project planning is a critical activity in the software development process. Wu and Simmons [9] further stress the importance of planning, stating that planning gives the first view of a software project s future. The project plan begins with choosing a software life cycle model. Students are introduced to the various life cycle models in the course lectures. Due dates for the project deliverables are strictly maintained. These deliverables follow very closely to the products produced in the phases of the waterfall model. The classic waterfall model allows the student project to begin swiftly at the start of the semester and requires the students to experience the entire software development methodology. Furthermore, other life cycle models contain the same phases of development. If a selected project lends itself more naturally to another development process, such as iterative prototyping or rapid application development, then students may select a reasonable alternative. Recognizing this, SOPPTS includes templates for class project deliverables and approximate due dates based on the student project schedule. Following the lifecycle phases, construction of the task list begins. Tasks form the atomic components of the project [4]. Each task should have a name as a form of identification and an expected start and end dates. Using the above templates, registered team-assigned students customize and decompose the tasks in SOPPTS to guide the development of their project. In Figure 1, a basic set of development tasks is displayed, accompanied by a planned start date and a planned end date for each task. A task is also associated with a deliverable to verify progress and finally each task is assigned to one or more members of the team. The interdependencies between tasks are recorded and these tasks are scheduled in order to avoid or minimize delay of the project. Figure 1. Team project task management Throughout the semester, the student team members will update these task records as progress on each task proceeds. The actual start and end dates of a task can be entered. During
the time frame of completing a task, the percentage completed can be entered and updated as progress on the task is made. Also the interim and final task deliverable can be uploaded and linked to a task. These deliverables can be viewed and downloaded by the team members and client partners or by the faculty mentor. When working on a complex project, it is important for team members, client partners and faculty to track the project to confirm a team s adherence to the schedule and to detect problems early when there might be time to do something about them. If the students and faculty do not track projects, they cannot control them. And, if a project is not being controlled, it is out of control [6]. Without tracking, students and teachers have no way to monitor potential problems or to know whether the project plans are being carried out correctly or accurately. In the past, it was difficult to find an effective way to track a project except by periodic static reports. With SOPPTS, students and faculty can view the plan through the online task progress chart (Figure 2). When users click the bar chart button in Figure 1, SOPPTS dynamically creates this chart from the task records stored in the SOPPTS database. Figure 2. SOPPTS online task progress chart Figure 2 shows an example of the dynamic online progress chart. Every task will either have one bar or two bars. One bar indicates that only the task and its planned start and end dates have been entered. A second bar indicates the amount of progress made on the task. In Figure 2, the top horizontal dark bars represent eight tasks planned starting and ending dates. The bottom bar for each task will either be green denoting a finished task or orange indicating a task in progress. The horizontal green bars of Task 1, 2, 3 and 4, indicate that these tasks have been completed. All of these tasks began on their planned start date and all of them finished before their planned end date. The lower orange bars on Task 5, 6, 7 and 8 indicate that work is progressing on these tasks and that they are 80%, 70%, 30% and 90% complete, respectively. The goal is to permit the team members and faculty to determine at a glance the team s resource allocation over time and the progress made on each task. This online progress chart can illustrate gaps in the process and where potential problems may occur. For example, in Figure 2, task 7 s deadline is June 29, but the task is only 30% complete and behind schedule. This delay could cause the entire project to be late. Chad should be contacted to
determine the cause of the delay. If a problem is discovered early, the team leader or faculty member may have time to resolve this problem and accommodate the delay. 4.3 Faculty Project Management In a project team, all team members contribute toward one single project. All of the team members must use the necessary skills of analysis, design, coding, verification and documentation. Through SOPPTS, the faculty member can assign the students to teams and monitor individual student participation through the list of tasks, the assignment of team members to these tasks (Figure 2), and the associated task documentation (Section 4.4). For example, SOPPTS can aid a faculty member in spotting slippages in a timetable for a deliverable. In the educational environment, it is important to determine if this slippage is due to the problem in time management or if the task is too complex for the skill level of the team members. These possibilities are important to remedy in a timely manner. SOPPTS provides a window into the development process of student teams. SOPPTS also forces the students to divide the project into manageable subprojects. Just like an industrial software project manager, the faculty member must insist on a well-defined method with clearly defined deliverables. SOPPTS helps students reach this objective. 4.4 Online Electronic Submission SOPPTS facilitates communication between faculty, client partners and student team members by providing an online submission function. With SOPPTS, students can submit all of their work electronically. These deliverables or homework assignments are stored in the SOPPTS database. Afterwards, the faculty member can read and evaluate these assignments online. Not only does the faculty member have a permanent record of the submission and an automatic organization of the submission, but also the faculty can use other tools to evaluate these submissions. For example, spell or code checkers or CASE tools that perform reverse engineering techniques can be applied to the appropriate submissions. 4.5 Aiding communication One of the objectives of SOPPTS is to provide students with project planning and guidance technology for their software projects. An important facet of guidance is the feedback from the faculty and client partners. After the student team members enter their project planning information into SOPPTS, the faculty and client partners can access SOPPTS and review the students projects. Faculty and client partners require an efficient response method within SOPPTS. The trouble of invoking a mail program and hunting and typing in a correct email address would limit the frequency of responses. By clicking the feedback link on the Project Management page, a feedback form is displayed and the reviewer can send email directly to the appropriate team members. The students are sent the reviewer s message immediately. All feedback is stored in the database for review. The students of BSU and many of the client partners for whom the projects were being developed are located several hours from the campus. Obtaining and submitting the information online was a major advantage for them. Another positive by-product was in the formation of teams. In the past, team members selected each other on the basis of vicinity and their schedules. With the online feature, geographically distributed teams are possible, thus providing the students with an opportunity for a richer team experience.
SOPPTS also contains some self-monitoring mechanisms. When a task that is not 100% complete passes the planned end date, SOPPTS will send an email to the faculty and student members. Upon logging in, project plans that have a past due date, tasks that span more than seven days or unassigned tasks that have passed their start date are flagged. SOPPTS makes it easy to record the progress of project work. Evaluations can be periodically performed to observe modifications, such as changes in end dates, task assignment or tasks that have been deleted or added to a project. This information can be useful for assessments and process improvement. 5. SOPPTS Analysis The students individual perceptions and reactions to SOPPTS were perhaps the most critical evaluation element. One advantage of using interviews as a means of assessing SOPPTS usefulness is that interviews document the actual as opposed to the ideal [1]. Eight months before the interviews were conducted, the consent form and two sets of interview questions, one for faculty and one for students, were developed and submitted to the appropriate university committees for approval. In February 2002, four faculty members and two students were approached to determine their reactions to SOPPTS and provide a source for data analysis. The questions were modified and formal taped interviews occurred from March 2002 to May 2002. Nineteen participants from three different groups were interviewed. Six senior undergraduate computer science majors, six graduate second year computer science majors, six computer science faculty members and one biomechanics faculty member participated. 5.1 Interview Analysis Content analysis was performed on the nineteen interview transcriptions for the purpose of identifying patterns, themes and biases [10]. The analysis began with the construction of a table that mapped each interview question with an individual s response. There were eighteen columns representing the combined and overlapping set of faculty and student interview questions. The table rows contained the major phrases from the answers supplied by the nineteen interviewees. These phrases were carefully viewed to search for common concepts or reactions. Each identified concept or reaction was placed in a second table. Once the concepts and reactions were extrapolated and placed in the second table, the table was reviewed to determine trends or patterns. The data were analyzed using the triangulation technique, which is one way of improving the probability that the findings and interpretations uncovered will be credible [5]. Triangulation of data supports research findings by showing that independent measures reveal the same findings, or do not contradict other findings in the study [7]. The earlier informal observations gathered from the six participants (the four faculty and two students) were compared to common themes found in the formal taped interviews. There was no overlap of the participants in the informal observations and formal interviews. 5.2 The Emerging Themes Numerous phrases from the interviews were examined in the data analysis, which led to the identification of twenty-three main concepts (Table 1). These twenty-three main concepts merged into six general themes forming the columns for the emerging themes table (Table 1). Analysis of the data revealed that SOPPTS furnished students and faculty better access to
information, led to improved communication, enhanced the learning environment, facilitated the learning of skill sets and improved time and project management. 6. Conclusion By exposing project information to the different project stakeholders, namely student team members, faculty and client partners, problems seem to be addressed promptly and effectively. This was perhaps the greatest impact using SOPPTS. This motivating property was also experienced at the University of Paderborn and University of Braunschweig through their web delivered project performance table [2]. SOPPTS provided the communication platform through its various interfaces and users supplied the information. SOPPTS enhanced the learning experiences of the student participants, as well as the teaching experiences of the faculty. Students experienced time and task management. Faculty could track the students and projects more completely and, therefore, provide important feedback to the students and produce more in depth evaluations of their work. In general, all participants thought that SOPPTS was valuable for the student project planning process. Students suggested that all classes require the use of SOPPTS just to use the features of the forum room and the online submission. For our study, only a few teams from the software engineering class used SOPPTS. It was suggested that all teams be required to use it from the start of the semester. Several participants have
asked to continue to use SOPPTS for other course group projects. Additional features requested included providing more online information and pull-down help boxes in SOPPTS. Overall, SOPPTS brings a new dimension to the planning and tracking of studentdirected projects for all the project stakeholders. It is seen as a valuable supplement in courses where team project development occurs. 7. Future Enhancements SOPPTS currently executes on the Microsoft Windows 2000 and utilizes Microsoft Access 2000 for the database support. A future enhancement to this tool would be to extend the number of platforms and database environments on which it executes. Providing additional platforms may increase SOPPTS use for student-directed projects in other disciplines. Much needs to be included into the development for a distributed student software project management tool. The inclusion of aspects from software estimation and project risk management are yet to be interfaced into SOPPTS. A future SOPPTS tool will make effective project tracking easier than ever. The positive response that was received from this first prototype is an encouragement that SOPPTS is on the right track. 8. References [1] Cocklin,B. (1996). Applying Qualitative Research to Adult Education: Reflections Upon the Analytic Processes. Studies in the Education of Adults, 28,88-116. [2] Gehrke, M., Giese, H., Nickel, U., Niere, J., Tichy, M., Wadsack, J. and Zυnforf, A, (2002). Reporting about Industrial Strength Software Engineering Courses for Undergraduates. ICSE 02, May 19-25, Orlando, Florida. [3] Hefner, R. (2000). Managing Projects through a Corporate Repository, Proceedings of the 33 rd Hawaii International Conference of System Science. [4] Lam, H.E. and Maheshwari, P. (2002). Task and Team Management in The Distributed Software Project Management Tool. Proceedings of the 25 th Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference. [5] Leedy, P and Ormrod, J. E., (2001). Practical Research, Planning and Design (7 th ed.), Upper Saddle River, NJ, Merrill Prentice Hall. [6] McConnell, S. (1997). Tool Support for Project Tracking. IEEE Software.Vol. 15, No. 5 [7] Miles, M.B., and Huberman, A.M. (1994). Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook (2nd ed). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. [8] Pressman, R. (2001). Software Engineering A practitioner s approach. (5 th ed.) Berkeley: McGraw- Hill. [9] Wu, C. S. and Simmons, D. (2000). Software Project Planning Associate (SPPA): A Knowledge-Based Approach for Dynamic Software Project Planning and Tracking. Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth Annual International Computer Software & Application Conference [10] Zhang, J. (2002). Designing and Implementing the Student Online Project Planning and Tracking System: Students and Faculty Evaluation of the SOPPTS Software. Doctoral dissertation. Ball State University, Muncie, IN.