Essays for TDT4235

Tor Stålhane

IDI / NTNU

Intro

The essay counts for 30 of the 100 points used to grade the students of this course

The essay must be written as a group effort

All the students in a group will get the same number of points

The essay should preferably be written in English although essays written in Norwegian will also be accepted.

Formal requirements

• 10 – 12 pages plus title page, 12 points Times New Roman, double line spacing

• The essay must have– A front page with title and the names of all the

group’s participants– Introduction, main section, discussion and

conclusions– At least five references that are not URLs but

URLs are also allowed

Topics The following slides shows a set of possible

essay topics. • The first line of each topic shall be used as

the essay’s title – also if the essay is written in Norwegian

• Each group must select one of the topics listed

• More than one group may select the same topic

Essay 1Use of the TRL

TRL – Technology Readiness Level – also

called TRI – Technology Readiness Index –

is used to assess technological products

both for software and hardware. • Is this a good way to assess new tools?• Could the method be extended to also

assess new methods and processes?

Essay 2Analysis paralysis

Over-reaching data-collection of as-is processes, and burgeoning project details and dependencies cause Time-To-Value to fade into oblivion.

Process experts • are hyper-driven to perfection and efficiency• have an insatiable appetite for metrics to

– demonstrate their impact– justify their effort.

The bigger and more holistic the process improvement, the more impressive the measured value.

How to avoid analysis – paralysis in SPI?

Essay 3The OODA Loop

Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act

The OODA loop • is used for continuous business improvement.• lays out a straightforward approach to solve a challenge.

The OODA loop is a competitor to the PDCA loop and may be more efficient especially in complicated situations where it is difficult to identify causes and effects.

Discuss how we can use OODA in SPI

Essay 4Resilience

Resilience has gained some attention lately. The idea is simple:• Use the plans and prescribed procedures as

long as they work – make sense• Drop the plans and procedures when they no

longer make sense. Change to– Improvisations– Sensemaking

How can we use resilience to improve software development projects?

Essay 5Scrum retrospectives

Scrum retrospectives are • efficient in the short term because they focus on

the current problems in the current project• inefficient in the long term because the

experiences and good ideas– Only stays in the heads of the participants– Benefits the current project only– Are not carried over to other projects in the

organization except as personal knowledge

How can we solve this problem?

Essay 6Developers’ changing priorities

There has been a significant change in developers’ priorities from 1999 to 2007.

These changes has been described and partly analysed in the course compendium.

The challenges are:• Way has this happened?• What are the consequences for software developmenet

organizations?

Scoring scheme

Area Comments Max scor

eScore

Originality 9

Challenges 9

Methods 6

Presentation 6

Sum 30