Successful software projects need to deal with people and economic considerations, as well as technical considerations. The learning objectives of this course are to enable the student to understand the fundamental principles underlying software management and economics; to analyze management situations via case studies; to analyze software cost/schedule tradeoff issues via software cost estimation tools and microeconomic techniques; and to apply the principles and techniques to practical situations. CS510 is one of the mainstream courses in the Master of Science in Computer Science with specialization in Software Engineering.This year, the course's special focus will be on software commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) product integration, a critical success factor for many projects.
Course Schedule
Weeks 1-6. Software management and economics goals and issues. Software life cycle process models. Software cost and schedule estimation; tradeoff and management option analysis. Business-case and economic analysis of software products and product lines. COTS integration phenomena and management.
Weeks 7-10. Relevant microeconomic concepts: production functions, economies of scale, present value, constrained optimization, statistical decision theory, risk, and the value of information. Software risk management.
Weeks 11-14. Theories of management and their application to software projects. People considerations: motivation, win conditions, leadership, teambuilding, group dynamics. Software life-cycle planning and control; software process model determination; development and content of project plans; project monitoring and control. Rapid application development opportunity tree and techniques. Software process maturity models and continuous process improvement.
Basis of grade. Term project: 40%; 2 midterms: 30%; Homework exercises: 30%.
Term Project. Either analysis of management and/or economic issues of a practical software engineering project, or a report on a special topic in software management and economics. Topics in Commercial-off-the-self (COTS) are encouraged.
Texts. Barry Boehm, Software Engineering Economics, Prentice Hall, 1981; Boehm et al., Software Cost Estimation with COCOMO™ II, Prentice Hall, 2000.
Time and Location. Monday and Wednesday, 8:30-9:50am, OHE 100
Instructor. Prof. Barry Boehm, SAL 328, (213) 740-8163, Fax (213) 740-4927;boehm@sunset.usc.edu
Office Hours.Monday and Wednesday, 10:00-12:00 or by appointment
Teaching Assistant. Jung-Won Park, SAL 329, (213) 740-6505;jungpark@sunset.usc.edu
TA Office Hours.Tuesday and
Thursday, 2:30-4:30pm or by appointment