Tool Usage in Students’ Software Projects

Pekka Mäkiaho – Timo Poranen, University of Tampere, School of

Information Sciences

23rd of August, 2012

Introduction

BackgroundResearch problemData gatheringResultsConclusionsFurther work

Background

• Two courses, year 2011-2012: SW Project management and Project work

• 14 projects, average size: 1331 working hours• 30 project managers, 67 developers• 5-10 ects• WWW-, desktop- and mobile phone –

applications• Free to select the set of SW tools

Tools in Software Developing projects

Project risks:– Technology risks– People risks– Organizational risks– Tool risks– Requirement risks– Estimation risks

SW tool categories:– Management tools– Development tools– Communication tools– Sharing and

documentation tools– Other tools

Research problem• Not a specific problem but getting an overview on:– the tools used in different categories– the processes that were used when selecting and changing

the set of tools– opinions on particular tools

• Target to improve course practices and teaching

Data gathering (1/3)• 3 Questionnaires during the course for all students• Extra questions to project managers• Observing the projects during the course in 6 reviews and by

weekly reports• Final reports after the projects

Data gathering (2/3)Q1 (1 month after the project start)– List all the tools you have used and on which purposes– Explain the method you used when selecting the tools

(PMs only)Q2 (in the middle of the projects)– Report any changes in tool usage– Explain the methods in tool changing (PMs)

Q3 (in the end of projects)– The same question on tool usage as in Q2

Data gathering (3/3)Tool selection process/reason categories:

– Own evaluation– Team member’s

recommendation– Client’s recom.– Course recom.– Earlier experience– Managers recom.– Free to use– To try a new tool– Related to project’s topic

Tool change reason categories:– Not all used the tool– A more suitable tool was

found– Tool did not work as expected– New need came– Not suitable technology to

use a tool– Not reported

An example project (1/3)(mobile application)

• Project management tools used (number of users)• Redmine (6), Kanbanery(5)

• Developing tools• Eclipse(4), AndroidSDK(1), RapidSVN(1)

• Communication tools• Email(5), IRC (5), Skype(1), SMS(1), Phone calls(1)

• Sharing and Documentation tools• GoogleDocs(4)

• Other tools• Stackoverflow(2), Photoshop(1)

An example project (2/3)(mobile application)

• Selection process • “Tools were evaluated and recommendations came

from all members. Also some tools came as given like Redmine Wiki from University and Android SDK from the client.”

• Foreseen tool risks• “Emulator performance issues”

• Unforeseen tool risks• “Android not being as open as we thought it is, Trying

Kanban without physical board, one computer broke”

An example project (3/3)(mobile application)

• Changes during the project• “It was noticed that UI-group did not use IRC and also,

that the information sent by project managers, just lost to the chat stream of developers. Thats why IRC was left only for developers and phpBB forum was taken to use as an official communication channel”• “Using of GoogleDocs increased during the project as

there were more documents to share.• “In the end of project fast communication was needed

so SMSs and phone calls were also used.”

Findings (1/4)• On average, 14 different SW Tools were used in a single

project.• 4.7 development tools in a project• Total number of dev tools was 32

• 14 of those not used by more than 1 student• Most used dev. tools

• Eclipse (32 users)• Netbeans (26)• MySQL(10)• However, these three were used only in 5 projects out

of 14

Findings (2/4)• The project management tools used in projects

• Redmine (11 projects) – recommended and provided by course• Wiki (3) – GoogleWiki, MediaWiki, DokuWiki• JIRA (2)

• Communication tools• On the top of phone calls, email and SMSs more than

half of students reported IRC, Skype, Facebook or Flowdock

Findings (3/4)• Personal experience had the most significant effect on the

tool selection process• 9 groups out of 14 mentioned “earlier experience”• “Managers recommendation” was mentioned by 7

groups• Only 1 group did not report any selection process / reason• More than half of groups did not report any (official) changes

on tools usage• Most frequently reported reasons for dropping a tool were

“not all used the tool” and “a more suitable tool was found”

Findings (4/4)• 12 tool related realized risks were reported in these 14

projects• 5 project reported foreseen risks

• Inexperience of project members• Technology issues

• 7 projects reported unforeseen risks• Wrong technology expectations• Users were not familiar enough with the tool selected

• 3 of these projects reported both foreseen and unforeseen risks

• 5 projects did not met tool related risks at all

Conclusions• Projects used on average 14 (min 8, max 23) tools• Personal experience had the most significant effect on the

tool selection process• Main reason for leaving a communication tool was lack of

commitment. (IRC, Skype) • SoMe (Facebook) was used a lot in communicating and in

management (meeting arrangements).

Further work• The correlation of tool selection and tool usage with the

process and product quality can be studied more precisely

• Continuous improvement of course's teaching practises

Thank you!Questions?

More information on projects:

• Pekka Mäkiaho and Timo Poranen (editors): Software Projects 2011-2012 University of Tampere, School of Information Sciences, Report 9 (2012). Partially in Finnish. http://www.uta.fi/sis/reports/index/R9_2012.pdf