Professional Computing CITS3200

Definition of Roles

The Group

Projects in CITS3200 are undertaken by groups, typically comprising 5-7 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 lab times, lecture timetable, software and other resources are in place
• Devise and promulgate the unit schedule for lectures, deliverables and marking
• Arrange Client and Mentor Coordination meetings
• 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 and grant extensions in documented cases
• Allocate Teams
• Ensure each team has username and computer resources
• Mediate between Team members in extreme cases
• Monitor all Teams, 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, Team working etc
• Delegate the Ethics lectures and the associated written assignment
• Mark or partly delegate the marking of Deliverables A-C
• Co-ordinate and mark all Presentations (Deliverable D)

Client

A Client will normally be from industry 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 technical advice necessary for the project, to work with the Team 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 Team as often as dictated by the demands of the project
• Provide technical 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. implement in Linux/jdk 1.3
• Negotiate with each Team 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!

IPR

In lay terms, the IPR remains with the students. Should the Client wish to use the outputs from the project, a suitable licence agreement may need to be signed by the team members. If this situation is expected to occur, the Client should inform the students of this at the outset of the project. Advice on IPR aspects may be obtained from Mr Kim Heitman, Director of Legal Services, UWA, who will be lecturing on this topic.

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 Team on four occasions for an hour
• Give advice on standard techniques, e.g. project planning, testing
• Give additional ad hoc advice by email (possibly)
• Respond to help3200 questions (possibly)
• Keep an attendance sheet

Created by Richard Thomas
July 14 2004
Most recently modified by Michael Wise
May 11 2009