MIS40850 The Term Paper Guideline

MIS40850 The Term Paper Guideline

``A case study of software engineering. ''

 Write an 8 page research paper. This page count includes the References section. Graphs, images, tables are not included in the 8 pages and so are indicated by caption and cross-reference text only e.g. <<Table 1 goes here >> or << Figure 1 goes here>>. Copies of the actual tables, figures, images will go into the appendix after the 8 pages. There is no page limit on the appendix.

Please acknowledge and reference all third party material, copyright etc. University College Dublin policies on plagiarism apply.

Scope:

The paper is written in an academic style, including references, bibliography etc.

An original descriptive case study of organisational aspects of your work environment or dealing with a project that you are/were involved in, applying theories and ideas discussed in lectures to illustrate and critique the challenge of designing, managing, controlling various aspects of software development. Alternatively a desk investigation (e.g. focused literature review, industry data analysis) may be agreed.

The subject matter should be of interest to anyone who wants to find out more about current software development practices. Indicative topics or subject areas may include:

• Software methodology (how you would characterise it e.g. in-house, waterfall/staged, agile/XP/iterative)
• Technology stack (a list/functional view of actual tools used to design/code/build/release)
• Issue tracking (bugs, support, features etc.) How it relates to daily dev activities?
• Design approaches; do you have a distinctive approach to designing? Where is design done? Who by?
• Deployment; how you deploy builds or packages, or operate if a service. How customers get and use it. DevOps.
• Code reviews, bench checks, pair programming. Practices around code and design reviewing.
• Approach to testing, Unit Tests, TTD, how testing is done during dev, before a release, for each build etc.
• Build; your policy for build/release, i.e. how you package, version, stage.
• Feature request/development life cycle.
• Quality Management Systems. What management system is in place? How it relates to Software methodology?
• Team environment, numbers of people in typical team, typical daily interactions, how interactions captured?
• Management challenges: knowledge management, career development, maintenance versus new product dev.
• Software Process Improvement (differences if any between maintenance versus new product dev.)

Suggested outline structure

Abstract: A brief summary of the context and contribution in easy to digest words. 

Introduction and Literature: Use the introduction to set the stage and survey the literature. Explain/critique the current state of knowledge and drawing upon relevant/similar research publications.

Research method: A short statement of the research design and research methods employed.

Case description/context: A readable descriptive account of the salient features of an important period, project, episode based on your own development experience and your view of what it is/was really like (insider's view).

Analysis: Interpret a concise selection of representative case data findings. Employ relevant theories or models to help explain the findings. 

Discussion: Relate the findings to the literature, to current professional practice. Seek to generalise findings for wider application. 

Conclusions: An overall synthesis.

(the following are not included in the page count)

References: A bibliography of references cited in the report; use the template reference style or Harvard equivalent. 

Appendices: Diagrams, figures, tables, and additional relevant material may be included in appendices.

Grading Criteria

Grading will consider the following:

1. The research project (motivation and goals) is clearly explained.
2. Critical positioning in literature.
3. Empirical work, data and evidence presented.
4. Contributions are clear.
5. Overall quality of the document as a finished product.

And so; questions the examiner will ask when reading the paper will be:

• Is the research project (motivation and goals) clearly explained?
• How is it positioned in the literature?
• Is empirical work, data and evidence presented?
• Are the findings, conclusions, contributions clear?
• Overall quality, how does the document look and read?

A brief explanation of letter grade descriptors is provided below.

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Modular (letter) grades.

A+/A

• The report is complete and covers all important topics.
• Appropriate significance is attached to the information presented.
• There is a compelling logic to the report that reveals clear insight and understanding of the issues.
• Analytical techniques used are appropriate and correctly deployed.
• The analysis is convincing, complete and enables creative insight.
• The report is written in a clear, lucid, thoughtful and integrated manner-with complete grammatical accuracy and appropriate transitions.

A-/B+

• The report is complete and covers all important topics.
• Appropriate significance is attached to the information presented.
• There is a clear logic to the report that reveals insight.
• Analytical techniques used are appropriate and correctly deployed.
• The analysis is convincing, complete and enables clear insight.
• The report is written in a clear, lucid, and thoughtful manner-with a high degree of grammatical accuracy.

B/B-

• The report is substantially complete, but an important aspect of the topic is not addressed.
• The report used information in a way that was inappropriate. 
• There is a clear logic to the report.
• Analytical techniques are deployed appropriately.
• The analysis is clear and the authors draw clear, but not comprehensive conclusions for their analyses.
• The report is written in a clear, lucid and thoughtful manner, with a good degree of grammatical accuracy.

C

• The report is incomplete, with important aspects not addressed.
• The report frequently used information that was substantially inappropriate or inappropriately deployed.
• The report’s analysis is incomplete and authors fail to draw relevant conclusions.
• The report is poorly written.

D

• The report is substantially incomplete.
• Whatever information provided is used inappropriately.
• There is little analysis and the report is inconclusive.
• The report is poorly written and presented.