Software Project Management, Theory (TIETS19-THEORY)

Posted on Author Websystems

Welcome to Software Project Management, Theory (TIETS19, Theory), homepage. The course gives 3 ects. Check also information on Software Project Management, Practice (TIETS19, Practice) from project course’s website.

News / Important

  • All summaries and reading notes submitted during summer are evaluated. If you have planned to graduate this fall or early in spring semester, and you have not studied TIETS19, Software Project Management, Theory, 3 ects, please contact teacher for special arrangements.
  • This is the last academic year when the course can be studied. Starting from fall 2021, there will be a new course that replaces TIETS19, Software Project Management, Theory, 3 ects. Last day to complete all course requirements (summary, four reading notes) is 31.7.2021.
  • Changes starting from 1.8.2021:
  • 25.6.2021: All summaries submitted before 24.6 are evaluated.
  • 25.6.2021: All complete set of reading note submissions are evaluated.
  • Next time summaries and reading notes will be evaluated in the beginning of August.
  • 6.7.2020: Current guidelines and workflow to study the course are valid till the end of academic year 20-21. Only minor changes are possible.
  • Join course’s Moodle forum.

Teacher responsible

Timo Poranen (timo.poranen at tuni.fi)

Curriculum

See Sisu page of the course.

On time usage and credits

The course gives 3 ects. The amount of work to return all required tasks (four reading notes and an article summary) is estimated as follows:

  • 10 hours to find, read and summarize a scientific article.
  • 68 hours to read the book and write four reading notes.

Workflow to study the course

There are no lectures. Workflow to study the course and to get credits is as follows:

  1. Join course’s Moodle-forum to enroll the course.
  2. Start reading the book:
  3. Write reading notes for each 4 part (1. Taming the soft machine, 2. Planning, 3. Process, and 4. People) of the book. The reading notes are returned to the course’s Moodle forum. Read more detailed guidelines for writing the reading notes.
  4. Select an article for the summary task and submit article’s details in the Moodle.
    • Write the summary and return the summary in the Moodle.
  5. Course will be graded after all four reading notes and the article summary are returned.
  6. Give feedback. The feedback form can be found from the Moodle.
  7. After you have received the credits, you can leave the Moodle-forum.

Reading notes

  • Write reading notes for each 4 part (1. Taming the soft machine, 2. Planning, 3. Process, and 4. People) of the book. The reading notes are returned to the course’s Moodle forum.
  • Length of your reading notes for each chapter should be about 3-5 pages. So, Part 1 of the book has three chapters (1. Seven Deadly Habits of Ineffective Software Managers, 2 Organizational Spring Cleaning, and 3 Relating PMBOK Best Practices to Software Development), so your reading notes for Part 1 should be something about 10 pages.
  • Avoid excessive “verbatim quotes” from the books: try to formulate the main points / ideas in your own words. This helps you to learn.
  • Direct copy-pasting is not allowed.
  • Use drawings, diagrams, mind maps, lists, tables, etc. in your reading notes.Text should be “looser” than in normal essays.
  • Your reading notes should be divided into chapters in a similar way as the book itself.
  • You may write the reading notes in English or Finnish.
  • The reading notes are official parts of the course requirements. As such they are subject to the usual regulations concerning plagiarism. Therefore do not copy from others or from the internet.
  • Each reading note is evaluated with a scale 1-6 or failed, so the maximum number of points from the reading notes is 24. A reading note that fails can be returned again. To pass the course, it is required that all the reading notes are passed.

Article summary task

  • This task must be done independently. Your task is to write a 2-3 pages summary of a scientific article related to software project management.
  • Familiarise yourself to the software engineering and project management journals and select an article related to software project management. You can use other journals and conference proceedings too. General project management articles and articles that deal with some specific area related to software development (like agile development models, testing process, quality management, team work, etc.) are also ok if there is a connection to the project management.
  • Some general management journals
  • Some computer science journals (only some of the articles are related to software project management)
  • IEEE Journals and conference proceedings
  • Full texts are available from ScienceDirect when you use university’s computers. Try also keywords “project management”.
  • The article should preferably be new, published during the last three years.
  • Submit the article details to the Moodle.
    • Lecturer will approve whether your selection is ok or not.
  • Read the article, understand the article, and write a summary:
    • The summary should be slightly longer than a traditional scientific article abstract, about 2-4 pages. In any case, the maximum lenght of the summary is four pages.
    • What is a summary of a scientific article? see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summary and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_(summary).
    • You can write the summary in Finnish or in English. Use this template (.docx, don’t change fonts/heading/margins etc. If you can’t work with .docx format, you can use your favourite editor and return the summary as .pdf document).
    • Return the summary to the Moodle.
    • Grading: failed, passed (0 extra point), adequate (1), well done (2-3 extra points).

Evaluation (draft, minor changes are possible)

  • Course will be graded after all four reading notes and article summary are returned.
  • Credits will be given in the beginning of the next teaching period. If you need to get your credits earlier, contact lecturer by email
  • From the reading notes (max 24p) and from the scientific article summary (at most 3 extra points) the maximum number of points is 27.
Points 10 or less 11 – 13 14 – 15 16 – 18 19 – 21 22 or more
Grade Failed 1 2 3 4 5