Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date

2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Computer Science

Committee Chair

Amy Cook

Committee Member

Amy Cook

Committee Member

Scott Fleming

Committee Member

Vinhthuy Phan

Abstract

Strategic planning is essential for a student software engineering team to successfully accomplish a project. Often student software teams struggle with planning, because it is hard for novices to distribute work among teammates, identify tasks, prioritize development tasks, and know how much time they should invest in each task. In other words, students struggle to self-regulate their learning. Prior work in this area typically focuses on an individual, and does not promote iterative reflection and feedback on a collaboratively created plan. In this paper, we introduce Software Engineering Team Strategic Planning (SETS Planning), a novel strategic planning and reflection technique that helps student teams plan software development tasks. We conducted a pilot test of our planning technique in an undergraduate Software Engineering course over two semesters. We report student perceptions of the experience, how students used and deviated from their plans, and teamwork challenges. Our findings show that when teams used our planning technique, recognizing and following the development tasks was smoother, students were more organized in team works, and estimating development time was closer to actual time. We also found that when teams use our process, they generate data that reveals the high performers and low performers within a team and helps the TA provide better help to a team.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest

Notes

Embargoed until 11/2/2023

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