Software engineering and outsourcing

Dragan JankovicTatjana Stankovic

Faculty of Electronic EngineeringUniversity of Nis, Serbia

8th Workshop "Software Engineering Education and Reverse Engineering“ - September 2008

Outlines

Outsourcing Needed knowledge SE knowledge Theory versus practice Questionnaire Recommendations Conclusion

Outsourcing

Definition Kinds of outsourcing

Realization team Kind of jobs Location Developer status

Realization team

Complete out – all developers are out of company

Shared-major – major part of developers is out of company

Shared-minor – minor part of developers is out of company

One-man show

Kind of job

Complete development Subsystem development Shared development

Location

Home Office(s) shared with other developers Another company offices (part time) Company connected to the main

company Part of company (full time, part time)

Developers status

Full time Part time

Work for 2 or more companies Software companies Different kind of companies On-line

students

Outsourcing perspective in WECs

Knowledge - good Culture – more less similar to Europe

countries culture Time zone – 1-2 hour for Europe; 6

hours for USA Salary – depends of the region,

between 400-1000, sometime senior developer much more (1500 or more)

Needed knowledge Programming languages IDE (Integrated Developing

Environments ) Debugging Testing Documentation writing Organization Time estimation Collaborative work (e-mail, video-

conference, phone, meeting with company representative)

Software engineering knowledge

Software life cycle Vision Requirements Specification Design Programming Documentation Deployment Maintenance

Software development models Waterfall Incremental Iterative Boehm spiral model Agile methodologies (eXtreme

Programming) RUP-Rational unified process Microsoft Etc.

Models in (outsourcing) practice

Models in practice Iterative Incremental eXtreme Programming

What is missing? Theory versus practice Theoretical knowledge demonstrated

on examples Problems:

Exercises and labs very simple and time limited

Projects realized by one or two students Students – not very interested in

imaginary problems

Questionnaire

B.Sc. and M.Sc. working in outsourcing companies

Working experience – between 1 and 10 years

Different kind of outsourcing Some of them have been working for

different companies

Questions Year of your graduation Years (months) of your working experience (1-10) What knowledge did you need right at the beginning of your career

that you have not get during your studies? (Java, C#, Debugging…) Do you think that programming language knowledge attained

during your studies were enough? If not, quote knowledge that you think should be included in regular studies. (Web services, UML, JavaScript, …)

Do you find Software Engineering knowledge from the faculty usable in practice? (Yes, but not enough)

Would you change something and what? (Real projects, bigger teams…) What software-developing methods are used in your company:

Structured methods Data-oriented methods Object-oriented methods Formal methods (deals with mathematically based software

engineering methods) Prototype methods (involves software prototyping)

Questions Do you use knowledge taken from your studies related to the

areas below (All the time/Sometimes/Never)? Algorithms and programming Data structures Databases Object Oriented programming Parallel programming

Do you find software testing knowledge you’ve got from your studies satisfactory? (No)

How much do you think this knowledge is necessary in every-day practice? (Much/Less/Not at all) (Much)

Do you find project management, software documenting and software developing life-cycle knowledge taken from regular studies satisfactory? (Software doc. More, pr.m. less, but not enough)

What would you change? (Lecturers experts, real world examples)

Questions Are you satisfied with your project managers? (No)

Do project managers in your company use knowledge taken from their studies (according to your opinion)? (No)

For what software life-cycle activity have you taken the most information during your regular studies? (Code implementing)

And for what the least? (Requirements, testing, …)

How much are knowledge and theory related to software life-cycle and activities and the way of their implementation different from your every day practice experience?

What software life-cycle activities in practice have the biggest disagree with theory-knowledge you achieved from studies?

Outsourcing experience Authors

More than 10 years Different kinds of outsourcing Outsourcing for/in companies

RistanCase GMBH - Zurich, Switzerland Siemens A.G. – Munich, Germany Infineon A.G. - Munich, Germany Accordia LLC – New York, USA ABB, Baden, Switzerland

Colleagues

Recommendations

For University For companies For students

For University More practical exercises More practical labs Modification of SE curricula Practical works in groups Project group size more than 5 students Assistants with practical experiences Projects in companies Story from real life

For companies

It is not real to expect “yang ready full developer”

Learning period Demonstration with courses and

tutors To offer including of students in real

projects

For students

Force cooperation with assistants and professors

Force interactive lectures

Conclusion

Software engineering in our faculty gives very good experts, but there is place for improving

Experts as guest-lecturers should definitely be one of the improvements

The idea of the exception of investigation team at the university should be considered?

THANK YOU!