Cambridge, UK – March 2009: Second year computer science students at the University of Cambridge are required to undertake a group project which allows them to gain practical experience of the whole development cycle, from requirements definition to implementation, testing and documentation. CAD Schroer UK, the Cambridge-based subsidiary of the global engineering solutions provider, provided support for one of the nine groups, acting as client in three progress meetings. The project culminated in an exhibition and student presentations, where non-student members of the audience were invited to select a winner.
The challenges were similar, and in some ways more daunting, than in a business environment. Groups were typically made up of students of different skill levels, who came from different colleges and did not know each other beforehand. They had to come together in self-managed groups to work for an external client. Assigned subjects ranged from a “Statistical Persuasion Maker” and “Remote Energy Saving” to a “Mobile Mirror Shopping Assistant”. During a 6-week period, each student was expected to work between 30 and 60 hours.
Engineers in CAD Schroer-s Cambridge office, which took on the role of client for one of the nine groups, have extensive experience in delivering diverse development projects. Developers work on the company-s own CAD, plant and installation design software, as well as offering software consultancy and development services to business clients worldwide, with projects ranging from software in aid of ship classification to real-time football match data analysis and visualisation.
Half Mentor, Half “Bully”
“We really enjoyed playing the part of the demanding client,” says Matt Judenfreund, Development Manager at CAD Schroer UK, who joined Technical Lead Simon Geard (a member of Darwin College, Cambridge University) in the project meetings. “We weren-t involved in the initial scoping or spec-writing, but we monitored progress, asked for improvements and sounded warnings where appropriate. We know most of the pitfalls inherent in development scenarios where everyone is keen to get on with the technical bits they-re good at without enough emphasis on coordination and communication.”
In the short time prescribed, each group came up with working code. “That-s really quite impressive, ” says Simon Geard, “To start from scratch, work in different locations and to a timescale which does not allow much scope for error, and to end up with a working demo is no small feat. I think it was a highly valuable learning experience for our group.”
Useful Lessons
What did the students themselves say they have learnt? “Project management. We didn-t really have a project leader, and that would have helped enourmously,” said one of the team members. They also agreed that a tighter specification and better identification of risks up front would have sped up the development effort, rather than learning about the subject and discovering problems as they went along. And the user interface should have been considered up front.
“It-s easy to underemphasise the importance of an early proof of concept, the integration of separate components and the user interface,” says Matt. “The Agile methodology for software development says -get something working as soon as possible, to look at and build on-. That-s a really important lesson, because this way of working highlights issues early on. Storyboard the UI, and get all the components working together at the beginning.”
CAD Schroer hopes to continue supporting the University of Cambridge-s computer science tripos. “Interacting with bright enthusiastic students was good for us too,” says Simon. “After all, we never stop learning.”
Videos of all presentations will be made available on YouTube at
http://www.youtube.com/user/CambridgeComputerLab
To find out more about CAD Schroer, please visit
http://www.cad-schroer.com/index.php?ref=pr0903_cu
To find out more about CAD Schroer UK-s software development services division, please visit
http://www.quintic.co.uk/index.php?ref=pr0903_cu
Visit the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory at
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/
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