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About the Software Engineering Showcase

Students in SENG302 and SENG402 (the capstone project for the BE) are involved in a year-long software engineering project. SENG302 is done in teams while SENG402 can be done in teams or individually. All teams in SENG302 follow a similar backlog (i.e. the overall project is the same with a few differences between teams) while the SENG402 projects are all different. SENG402 projects might be done in conjunction with a business. At the end of the year, each individual/group gets a chance to present to the whole department. The SENG402 presentations will usually be about their projects and what they have learnt. SENG302 students do technical presentations and demos at their reviews every sprint, so the Software Engineering Showcase is more of a celebration of their year and what they have learnt. These presentations form part of the SENG302/SENG402 course requirements. Usually the SENG302 and SENG402 presentations occur on different days.

The Software Engineering Showcase is open to everyone including parents, friends, industry representatives, and the wider community. Everyone is invited to join us as we showcase the fruits of the hard work and effort that goes into each one of these projects.

The Software Engineering Research Project is a required course for all graduating software engineering students. The research project provides the opportunity for students to demonstrate their preparedness to work as professional software engineers on challenging projects. Students build on the skills learned through projects they have undertaken in earlier years of the programme where these projects offer a specific research-focused venue for students to explore advanced methods or late breaking results into new problems.

The department offers final year students the opportunity to engage with industry on company-sponsored projects. These company-based opportunities complement the range of projects offered each year by academics in the department. Each year, roughly 50% of the students are engaging with the industry where cutting edge research expertise can be applied to an industrial context.

Brief history

To understand the history of the Software Engineering Showcase, one needs to know a little bit about the history of the project course. The third year project course has been taught under various course codes using various methods over the years. However, a year-long project was taught at CSSE for a few decades. Historically, most of the focus in the course was on the end product; the intent was that focusing on the end result would build and test the technical performance of the team. The side effect of this, unfortunately was, that in reality, it meant that the quality of the product was much more important than the learning gained by the team. It promoted “hero culture”, where one or a few developers pulled the project through to completion by doing a heroic effort. In terms of presentations/demos, it meant that students had only one presentation close to the end of the year where the team presented their product to the class.

Over the years, the field of software engineering grew and more process-oriented frameworks and methods were being used in industry to develop software. As in other fields, experts (software engineers in the field and occupational psychologists) discovered the importance of qualitative (“soft”) skills in software development projects. Various studies into project management highlighted the significance of human factors in the failure or success of software projects. The project course changed to include these aspects. The course moved from more of an RUP process to spiral (with iterations) to XP. With each change, more of the process and team skills were brought into the project course.

Today, SENG302 students use the Scrum framework to develop software in their teams. The emphasis now is not on the technical skills (which are taught and assessed in other courses) but on the skills required to build “larger” pieces of software over a longer period within a team of developers in the context of an organisation with stakeholders. Students have to learn to communicate with people in various contexts (e.g. technical, business, and laypeople). They also need to understand the business’ strategy and help with prioritising and grooming the backlog. At every review (at the end of each sprint), teams do a technical presentation and demo their product to the rest of the class who actively provide feedback. Retrospectives at the end of each sprint enable students to reflect and make changes to continually improve. Apart from the usual software deliverables each sprint, students also have to do in-depth self-reflections and provide feedback for all the peers in their team. The emphasis is on learning. Students learn to embrace failure and use it as a stepping stone towards learning.

In 2006, Moffat Mathews with Neville Churcher and Warwick Irwin officially changed the final presentation to the Software Engineering Showcase. SE Showcase has had several changes over the years to reflect the purpose and goals of the presentations. The SE Showcase is now a public event, i.e. the teams need to communicate to a wide audience that contains lay and technical people. The SE Showcase is not a technical presentation (like at the reviews), neither is it a marketing presentation. At this presentation, the students present to the wider community (wider set of stakeholders), letting them know what they achieved in items they were tasked with over the year and what they learnt. Their achievements are not just the product, but their “personal portfolio” of skills required to work in a team. It is also a celebration of the fairly intense work and learning that each student goes through over the year.

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