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 Value-Based Software Engineering (VBSE) and the Incremental Commitment Model (ICM) as a framework of theory, principles, and practices for integrating human and economic values into software engineering and management practice.

Course Schedule

Weeks 1-6 : The ICM and its underlying principles (commitment and accoutability, key stakeholder satisficing, incremented process, concurrent engineering, risk-driven activities and content). Software management and economics trends, goals and issues. Theories of management and their application to software projects. People considerations: motivation, win conditions, leadership, teambuilding, group dynamics. Value-Based Software Engineering. Software life cycle process models. Balancing agility and discipline. Software cost and schedule estimation; tradeoff and management option analysis.

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. Business-case and economic analysis of software products and product lines.

Weeks 11-14 : Software life-cycle planning and control; software process model determination; development and content of project plans; project monitoring and control. Software process maturity models and continuous process improvement. Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software management and economics. Economics of software quality/dependability and security. Outsourcing and global development. Systems of Systems. Service Oriented Architectures. Software Engineering Ethics.

Basis of grade : Final exam: 30%; 2 midterms: 20%; Homework exercises: 50%.

Textbooks:

• Boehm et al., Software Cost Estimation with COCOMO™ II, Prentice Hall, 2000 -- A.K.A. CII (the Red Cover Book)
• Selby, Software Engineering: Barry W. Boehm's Lifetime Contributions to Software Development, Management, and Research, Wiley, 2007 -- A.K.A. BB (the Green Cover Book)
• Boehm and Turner: Balancing Agility and Discipline, Addison Wesley, 2004 (the Red and White Cover Book)

Books on Reserve

Time and Location : Monday and Wednesday, 8:30-9:50am, OHE 122; Friday: 9:00 - 9:50 am, OHE 136;

Instructor :

Teaching Assistant: (EMAIL ALL TAs to csci510@usc.edu. All emails to TA's personal email inbox will be DISCARDED.)

Use of DEN : Grades for this course will be posted on DEN system. For accessing DEN, you can go to http://den.usc.edu , and use your DEN account (usually email + "_oc" as username, and you may setup your own password). Homeworks will be submitted electronically through DEN website. Detail instruction will be posted shortly.

Tools : COCOMO™II Homepage and COCOMO™II.2000.3 Self-Extracting Program (Windows Platform)