EE 382V - Collaborative Software Design and Development

Office Hours

Spring: Tuesday and Thursday -- 10:00-11:00 am in ENS 623A

Syllabus

This graduate depth course in software engineering will focus on the problem of collaborative software design and development. The internet has made it possible to collaborate in ways that were not imagined in the days before the world was wired. As collaboration technologies improve, software development on a global scale becomes possible. Our prime example is open source software development that has forged a wildly successful, new style of collaboration. However, most of the work that people do requires some degree of coordination and communication with others. But the development of technology to support collaboration has proven to be a considerable challenge in practice. Successful designs require (1) software engineering insight into mechanisms to organize information, coordinate, share, and communicate, and (2) HCI design insight to achieve successful designs for computer- mediated tools, and (3) social psychological insight into group processes. We will examine these topics in the context of a number of examples of open source collaborative design. We consider relevant theoretical and empirical results concerning group behavior in the context of collaborative design.

Class Proposal Blurb

Reading and Class Preparation

Class Grade


Reading Assignments