Professional Computing CITS3200

Definition of Roles

The Group

Projects in CITS3200 are undertaken by groups, typically comprising 5-6 students enrolled in the unit. Projects are proposed by clients and it is the up to the Group to negotiate with the Client about details of the project, and then to complete as much of the project as possible in the time allowed within the unit. Above all, Group members are expected to act at all times as professionals.

Unit Co-ordinator

The Coordinator has responsibility for the running of the unit as a whole. This role is normally filled by an experienced academic. Sufficient documentation needs to be provided to maintain consistency between the various parties - Clients, Mentors and Groups. Most of the effort will be focused on the Group Project. Major tasks:

• Coordinate all the Clients and Mentors for sufficient projects for the enrolment
• Ensure that lecture timetable, mentors, and other resources are in place
• Devise and promulgate the unit schedule for lectures, deliverables and marking
• Act as a Client of one or two projects (and receive credit for them as a Client)
• Develop an overall marking scheme
• Maintain the unit homepage and unit outline and other documentation
• Collate, grade and scale all marks as necessary
• Enforce the deadlines
• Allocate members to Groups
• Mediate between Group members in extreme cases
• Monitor all Group, Mentors and Clients
• Resolve conflict and deal with appeals and requests for remarking
• Give lectures as appropriate and organize experts to give other, relevant lectures. Process, Group working etc
• Delegate the Ethics lectures and the associated written assignment
• Co-ordinate the marking of all Presentations (Deliverable D)

Client

A Client will normally be from UWA and the wider community, although clients can also come from within CSSE. Their role is to act as a client for the project group, to give domain-specific advice necessary for the project, to work with the Group to develop a Specification and Acceptance Tests and to perform some marking. Tasks include:

• Attend Client Coordination meetings
• Devise one or more projects, each to be undertaken by one or more groups at the Client's discretion
• Write a preliminary Project Brief
• Meet each Group as often as dictated by the demands of the project
• Provide domain-specific support and advice as required by the scope of the project
• Agree and advise on the contents of some of Deliverables A, B and C, e.g. the platform on which the project is to be delivered, e.g. Web-based, mobile app, etc.
• Negotiate with each Group Acceptance Tests that they will document
• Undertake Acceptance Tests after completion of Deliverable C (includes the finished system)
• Mark parts of Deliverables A, B and C

The clients and the mentors are very busy professionals, with many years of experience, who are donating their time and talent. Groups must endeavour to accommodate clients' often very tight schedules as far as practical. If groups explain their constraints it will generally be possible to come to some agreement about meeting dates, times and venues. After all, everybody wants the projects to succeed!

Intellectual Property

The IP that students create remains with the students, so the Project Proposals outline how IP generated by the Group should be handled. The default model is Creative Commons, particularly CC BY-NC, though other models may be used, subject to agreement by the Group. It needs to be borne in mind that while student-generated IP will reside with the students, others will also have IP in the projecct, notably the proposer.

Mentor

The Mentor will normally be someone with industrial software engineering experience. Their role is to mentor the teams about Software Process, working in teams, the overall deliverable process, post mortems and common techniques (e.g. specification, project planning, testing), but not technical detail about a specific project. Technical details of the project, its specification, and specific software techniques are not the within the Mentor's domain. The Mentor will also monitor the teams to check they are functioning adequately and to give advance warning of severe problems. Tasks include:

• Meet the Group on four occasions for an hour
• Give advice on standard techniques, e.g. project planning, testing
• Give additional ad hoc advice by email (possibly)
• Keep an attendance sheet

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School of Computer Science & Software Engineering The University of Western Australia Last modified: August 14 2017 Modified By: Michael J Wise