A comprehensive examination of the mathematics courses undergraduate engineering majors take in their first two years, and their success in those courses was conducted to determine the impact of course level and grade on student persistence in engineering. Six hundred fifty five, full-time freshmen enrolled as engineering majors at a major university in the Southwest United States participated in the study. Data was gathered from the 2007 freshman cohort. Students' grades for each of their first University mathematics courses were tracked, and used to gauge probabilities of subsequently persisting as an enrolled Engineering major. Participants were grouped into 9 categories representing 3 levels of course grade (A or B; C; and D, F, or W), crossed with 3 levels of course (Below Calculus I, Calculus I, and Above Calculus I). Student enrollment and graduation rates for each of these groups were examined for the next 5 years. A binary logistic regression with two main effects (Course and Grade) and one interaction was performed. Results show that if a student's first course was above Calculus I, they were 2.3 times more likely to be retained in Engineering than a student who took Calculus I. If a student took Pre-calculus or another course below Calculus I they were less than half as likely to persist in Engineering than those who took Calculus I (p<;.001). Likewise, if a student received an A or B for their first mathematics course regardless of which course they took, they were 6.5 times more likely to persist than someone who received a D, F, or W in their first mathematics course (p<; 0.001). The special role of Calculus as a gatekeeper, preventing engineering-intending students from obtaining an engineering degree, is discussed.

Engineering schools must strive to evolve a new paradigm for undergraduate education that recognizes the evolution of the skills and learning styles of its incoming students and prepares them to tackle society's grand challenges of the future, while at the same time increases the probability of their success in their chosen engineering program. Most researchers and experts in the field agree on some basic tenants of retention [1-3], which include developing community amongst freshmen, creating connections for freshmen through meaningful interactions with returning students and faculty, engaging freshmen in active learning environments, helping freshmen understand and internalize the vision and mission of the school, and assisting freshmen to develop a personal identity as an Engineer. This paper describes the creation of new freshmen engineering courses, taught in a new learning environment with a new instructional model that addresses all of these important tenants of retention.

Cloud computing provides many benefits to users including the elimination of up front infrastructure investment plus lower overall infrastructure costs due to increased resource usage efficiency. Cloud applications can also make use of outside services on demand. Since cloud computing operates on a pay-as-you-go model, application developers must understand the economics of their software in finer detail. They must understand how much their software costs to run and how much revenue they earn as their software runs. This understanding comes from knowing how the application uses infrastructure and services for which costs accumulate. We explore some fundamental concepts of cloud application economics at the transaction level.

Abstract Requirements volatility is a common development project risk that can have severe impacts. An empirical survey of over 300 software project managers and other software development personnel was performed to examine effects of various software development factors on requirements volatility. This paper reports the survey data results showing relationships between a number of software development process factors and requirements volatility. Key software project factors studied for their relationship with requirements volatility include process maturity level and various process techniques used for requirements engineering activities, such as requirements elicitation, prototyping, analysis and modeling, specification, and reviews. Significant correlations between the process factors and requirements volatility resulted from the analysis of some of the factors. The use of particular requirements engineering process techniques showed correlations with lower levels of requirements volatility. Other findings indicated that projects which used some types of prototypes to elicit requirements had higher levels of requirements volatility in later phases of the development cycle than lower levels, as one might expect. The presented results can be used by software development managers to proactively address and possibly mitigate the risk of requirements volatility, and to understand the potential for increased requirements volatility when certain methods are utilized. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Complete interaction testing of components is too costly in all but the smallest systems. Yet component interactions are likely to cause unexpected faults. Recently, design of experiment techniques have been applied to software testing to guarantee a minimum coverage of all t-way interactions across components. However, t is always fixed. This paper examines the need to vary the size of t in an individual test suite and defines a new object, the variable strength covering array that has this property. We present some computational methods to find variable strength arrays and provide initial bounds for a group of these objects.

A significant factor in the success of a software project is the management skill of the project leader. The ability to effectively plan and track a software project utilizing appropriate techniques and tools requires training, mentoring and experience. This paper describes a collaborative effort between Arizona State University and Motorola University to develop a software project management training course. Although many such courses exist in academia and industry, this course incorporates a system dynamics simulator of the software development process. The use of this simulator to train future software project managers is analogous to the use of a flight simulator to train pilots. This paper describes the software project simulator and how it is utilized in the software project management training course. Feedback from the training course participants is also shared and discussed.

This decision support system was built to assist project managers to design and tailor the software development process to their specific projects for achieving required software reliability values. The decision support system has two subsystems: a knowledge-based expert system for reliability engineering strategy selection and a process simulator for strategy assessment. We present here the knowledge-based component for strategy selection assistance. The paper describes the framework for identifying software reliability engineering practices and the decision factors for selecting a subset of practices appropriate for the project, taking into account various project constraints. After identifying heuristics for making the selection decisions, we have developed a knowledge base and implemented an expert system to help a less experienced project manager with engineering the process in a product quality driven manner. The expert system is a rule based fuzzy logic system, developed by using the off-the-shelf FuzzyCLIPS shell.

The paper focuses on improving the planning and tracking abilities of software projects through the utilization of system dynamics modeling. A prototyped software project management tool, which incorporates a system dynamics model of the concurrent incremental development process, was developed and is described. The tool enables project personnel to plan and track a project in terms of schedule, budget, and quality. It also provides a "what if" capability that enables project personnel to assess the impact of proposed project control actions in terms of schedule, budget, and rework hours. These proposed actions are analyzed, utilizing the underlying system dynamics model which evaluates the actions in terms of dependencies and feedback loops among project variables. The concepts discussed in the paper and demonstrated through the prototype tool should be integrated into existing project management tools to increase their power and effectiveness.

Reducing software development cycle time without sacrificing quality is crucial to the continued success of most software development organizations. Software companies are investing time and money in reengineering processes incorporating improvements aimed at reducing their cycle time. Unfortunately, the impact of process improvements on the cycle time of complex software processes is not well understood. The objective of our research has been to provide decision makers with a model that will enable the prediction of the impact a set of process improvements will have on their software development cycle time. This paper describes our initial results of developing such a model and applying it to assess the impact of software inspections. The model enables decision makers to gain insight and perform controlled experiments to answer "What if?" type questions, such as, "What kind of cycle time reduction can I expect to see if I implement inspections?" or "How much time should I spend on inspections?".

Since its introduction by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) in 1987, the SEI Software Process Maturity Model has gained wide visibility and acceptance by industry. Its overall goal is to enable an organization to assess its software process maturity in order that it might be able to improve its software development process. Inspired by the success of the SEI model, this paper describes an attempt to develop an analogous, but highly simplified and unvalidated process maturity framework applicable to software engineering project courses. Our goal is to enable an instructor of a software engineering project course to assess the software development processes utilized in the course and to improve these processes leading to better managed and more successful projects.

Abstract The development of high quality large‐scale software systems within schedule and budget constraints is a formidable software engineering challenge. The modification of these systems to incorporate new and changing capabilities poses an even greater challenge. This modification activity must be performed without adversely affecting the quality of the existing system. Unfortunately, this objective is rarely met. Software modifications often introduce undesirable side‐effects, leading to reduced quality. In this paper, the software modification process for a large, evolving real‐time system is analysed using causal analysis. Causal analysis is a process for achieving quality improvements via fault prevention. The fault prevention stems from a careful analysis of faults in search of their causes. This paper reports our use of causal analysis on several significant modification activities resulting in about two hundred defects. Recommendations for improved software modification and quality assurance processes based on our findings are also presented.

A comprehensive approach is given to improving the software maintenance process based on task analysis. Techniques are presented for determining maintenance tasks and their relationships. Different methods are then used to derive necessary information to perform these tasks. This information can then be placed in a database and used by tools for dissemination to software engineers to help them perform maintenance tasks. Case study results for the application of this process are described.>

The authors present a testing methodology framework which attempts to provide guidance in testing technique selection and application. The framework defines several testing levels with complementary technique groups defined for each level. Each testing technique group is a collection of testing techniques with a common objective and emphasis. In addition, several categories of testing metrics are defined which can be utilized to increase testing effectiveness. The proposed testing methodology framework was initially developed to satisfy the diverse project needs of one organization. The methodology framework, however, is expandable and can be customized to meet the needs of other organizations and updated to reflect technology improvements in the testing area.>

The typical one-semester software engineering course is normally geared towards new software development. Unfortunately, most new computer science graduates do not find themselves in a position where they are developing new software but instead in a position where they are maintaining an existing product. This paper describes some current practical software maintenance approaches which can be taught as a part of a software engineering course.

A research project is described, the objective of which is the development of a practical software maintenance environment. The existing functional capabilities of the environment are described as well as research currently in progress. The ripple effect is identified and the application of the analyzer discussed. A brief description is given of current research, including semantic database integrity, maintenance information display, expansion to modern language capabilities, and management information systems.>

Software technical reviews are essential to the development and maintenance of high quality software. These review processes are complex group activities for which there exist an abundance of basic concepts evolved over years of practical experience. In a typical one-semester software engineering course very little of this information is adequately conveyed to students. Texts supporting this course are also very weak in this area. This paper provides a practical approach for teaching about software technical reviews in a one-semester software engineering course. The contents for two to three lectures on this topic are described as well as suggested exercises and an approach for integrating technical reviews with the usual team project. An extensive annotated bibliography is also provided to assist instructors and students.

No abstract available.

article Free Access Share on Monitoring and evaluating individual team members in a software engineering course Author: James S. Collofello Computer Science Department, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona Computer Science Department, Arizona State University, Tempe, ArizonaView Profile Authors Info & Claims ACM SIGCSE BulletinVolume 17Issue 1Mar. 1985 pp 6–8https://doi.org/10.1145/323275.323277Online:01 March 1985Publication History 13citation271DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations13Total Downloads271Last 12 Months9Last 6 weeks2 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF

The high cost of software during its life cycle can be attributer largely to software maintenance activities, and a major portion of these activities is to deal with the modifications of the software. In this paper, design stability measures which indicate the potential ripple effect characteristics due to modifications of the program at the design level are presented. These measures can be generated at any point in the design phase of the software life cycle which enables early maintainability feedback to the software developers. The validation of these measures and future research efforts involving the development of a user-oriented maintainability measure, which incorporates the design stability measures as well as other design measures, are discussed.

A large amount of software development is performed by teams of individuals. To prepare students for these team efforts, many universities are beginning to offer computer science courses in which a software development team project is undertaken. The performance of these teams may be affected by many complex factors. This paper will describe some of our experiences from teaching several different types of project team courses. Factors which affect project team effectiveness will also be discussed.

In this paper a sequence of software engineering courses based upon the software life cycle and integrated by a single, medium-size project will be described in detail. The courses will be presented from an educational point of view, emphasizing the topics covered as well as the logistics of teaching the courses. A comparison of these courses to other software engineering courses existing in university curricula will also be presented. The potential advantages for faculty, students, and the research community of this type of course sequence will also be enumerated.

Software maintenance is the dominant factor contributing to the high cost of software. In this paper, the software maintenance process and the important software quality attributes that affect the maintenance effort are discussed. One of the most important quality attributes of software maintainability is the stability of a program, which indicates the resistance to the potential ripple effect that the program would have when it is modified. Measures for estimating the stability of a program and the modules of which the program is composed are presented, and an algorithm for computing these stability measures is given. An algorithm for normalizing these measures is also given. Applications of these measures during the maintenance phase are discussed along with an example. An indirect validation of these stability measures is also given. Future research efforts involving application of these measures during the design phase, program restructuring based on these measures, and the development of an overall maintainability measure are also discussed.

Software maintenance has been the dominant factor contributing to the high cost of software. In this paper, the software maintenance process and the important software quality attributes that affect the maintenance effort are discussed. Among these quality attributes, the stability of a program, which indicates the resistance to the potential ripple effect that the program would have when it is modified, is an important one. Measures for estimating the stability of a program and the modules of which the program is composed are presented, and an algorithm for computing these stability measures is given. Application of these measures during the maintenance phase is discussed along with an example. Further research efforts involving validation of the stability measures, application of these measures during the design phase, and restructuring based on these measures are also discussed.

Maintenance of large-scale software systems is a complex and expensive process. Large-scale software systems often possess both a set of functional and performance requirements. Thus, it is important for maintenance personnel to consider the ramifications of a proposed program modification from both a functional and a performance perspective. In this paper the ripple effect which results as a consequence of program modification will be analyzed. A technique is developed to analyze this ripple effect from both functional and performance perspectives. A figure-of-merit is then proposed to estimate the complexity of program modification. This figure can be used as a basis upon which various modifications can be evaluated.