Hopefully, the software your team
created this quarter as resulted in a fun, playable game. However, the goal of
this project is for you to learn about software engineering through experience.
For your final essay, you should reflect on and write up what you learned about
software engineering during this team project.
Possible topics to consider include:
·
the
overall waterfall methodology (did it work well or not?);
·
how
well the various phases (requirements, design, etc) worked, particularly in
retrospect;
·
what
facilitated good teamwork and communication;
·
how to
manage differences of opinion;
·
the
benefits and limitations of collaborative decision-making;
·
distribution
of workload and motivation;
·
risk
management and scheduling issues.
These are just suggestions - if you
feel the most important lessons you learned were on other topics, that’s
fine too.
I
think a good write-up that clearly and concisely expresses your ideas should be
close to 1000 words (about 3 pages double spaced). Essays that are significantly shorter or that
contain waffling, rambling prose probably indicate a lack of adequate reflection
or learning on your part.
The
essay should be submitted via email in a
standard format (.pdf, .doc, .txt) to dolsen@soe.ucsc.edu,
and cc’d to cormac@soe.ucsc.edu,
by midnight on Thursday March 23rd.
This
essay is worth 6% of your total grade.