Many software development courses include both instruction in formal and informal techniques and application of those techniques on a team project.In teaching such a course, a dilemma arises in trying to present material in sufficient detail before students must apply the material in their projects.The students are not comfortable with a technique before they must use it.If the project is moved later in the course, the students do not have enough time to tackle a problem that is big enough to require many of the software development techniques.There must be a better approach to teaching the course without separating the material into two courses or dividing the course over two terms.This paper describes an iterative approach.Let the students develop an initial pass at the project using the techniques they know.Then, have them apply the techniques learned in this class to later iterations.They develop a reasonably large project and apply the techniques appropriately.In addition, they have an opportunity to modify and maintain their documents as they complete the project.This paper describes the approach, experiences using it, and what modifications might be useful.OVERVIEW Two software development courses are described in this paper.The fwst is a software development course taught at Furman University in the Spring of 1991.The second is a course in software engineering taught at Millersville

A framework is presented for analyzing most of the experimental work performed in software engineering over the past several years. The framework of experimentation consists of four categories corresponding to phases of the experimentation process: definition, planning, operation, and interpretation. A variety of experiments are described within the framework and their contribution to the software engineering discipline is discussed. Some recommendations for the application of the experimental process in software engineering are included.

This paper examines the use of cluster analysis as a tool for system modularization. Several clustering techniques are discussed and used on two medium-size systems and a group of small projects. The small projects are presented because they provide examples (that will fit into a paper) of certain types of phenomena. Data bindings between the routines of the system provide the basis for the bindings. It appears that the clustering of data bindings provides a meaningful view of system modularization.

A family of syntactic complexity metrics is defined that generates several metrics commonly occurring in the literature. The paper uses the family to answer some questions about the relationship of these metrics to error-proneness and to each other. Two derived metrics are applied; slope which measures the relative skills of programmers at handling a given level of complexity and r square which is indirectly related to the consistency of performance of the programmer or team. The study suggests that individual differences have a large effect on the significance of results where many individuals are used. When an individual is isolated, better results are obtainable. The metrics can also be used to differentiate between projects on which a methodology was used and those on which it was not.