Senior Project -- Reading

Reading

This page contains readings for Senior Project.

Introductory material

Carefully read the about the course and what is design pages from the course website.
It is not about software or hardware, it is about engineering. Read Peter J. Denning, The Profession of IT The Forgotten Engineer, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 60, No. 12, pp. 20-23, December 2017.

Agile development

Agile development is very popular now. It started in the software industry, but is, literally, everywhere now. The big idea is Agile is incremental development. Some useful reading:

The Agile Manifesto is where it all started.
A history of Agile with diagrams describing Waterfall and Agile is, Carlone Mimbs Nyce, The Winter Getaway That Turned the Software World Upside Down, The Atlantic, December 8, 2017.
Wikipedia has a good overview of Agile including history and the method, Agile software development
One "flavor" of agile is Scrum. Read about Scrum in What is Scrum from scrum.org
Another "flavor" of agile is Lean Start-up. Read about Lean Start-up in Lean Start-up from theleanstartup.com.
Key to Agile is the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). But what is the MVP for developing a car, a wheel or a skateboard? Thoughts by Henrick Kniberg are here: here.

Engineering design process

The engineering design process is at the heart of what engineering is all about. A key paper is the following.

S. Mosborg, R. dams, R. Kim. C. Atman, J. Turns, and M. Cardella, Conceptions of the Engineering Design Process: An Expert Study of Advanced Practicing Professionals, Proceedings of the 2005 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, 2005.

The engineering design process is taught to non-engineers in a variety of ways.

A discussion of engineering design as taught in K-12 by TeachEngineering is Engineering Design Process
The Engineering Design process as a Taco Party (video)

Project planning and management

The PMBOK is a standard for project management. Read at least Chapter 1.

Engineering standards

Knowledge of relevant engineering standards is very important for a project.

An overview of engineering standards from NPES is Standards: What Are They and Why Are They Important?
Engineering standards arguably started with ASME and their standards for steam boilers. An overview from ASME is The ASME Codes and Standards Writing Guide.
A specific industry will often have standards - the piping industry is one example as described What are Engineering Standards (you do not need to learn piping standards... you should study the two key definitions and get an overview of the depth and breadth of standards)
Companies (or in this case a government lab) may have standards for a broad range of engineering areas. An example from Los Alamos National Laboratory is LANL Engineering Standards (you do not need to read this in detail - that would really be impossible - you just need to get a big picture view)
A relevant standard to computing is Information and Communication Technology - Revised 508 Standards and 255 Guidelines from the United States Access Board (you do not need to read this entire document in detail, but do look at section 1194.22 carefully).

Risk

Understanding and mitigating risk is a key part of an engineering project. Risk analysis and mitigation often falls under the broad umbrella of Systems Engineering.

The SEBoK (Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge) has a section on Risk Management
The MITRE corporation in their Systems Engineering Guide has a section on Risk Management
ISO has a standard for risk management, ISO 31000:2018 Risk Management (you should read the first three sections available in the preview)

Team work

Team work is very important to project (and personal career) success. Three papers that describe key attributes for good team work are as follows. We will discuss these papers in class.

Connie Wells, Teaching Teamwork in Information Systems, Idea Group Publishing, 2002.
C. Van Slyke, K. Trimmer, and M. Kittner, Teaching Teamwork in Information Systems Courses, Journal of Information Systems Education, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 36-46, 1999.
Robert Lingard and Elizabeth Berry, Teaching Teamwork Skills in Software Engineering based on an Understanding of Factors Affecting Group Performance, Proceedings of 32rd ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, November 2002.

Major (and very successful) companies have very different work environments with respect to teamwork. Read about Amazon and Google (and compare and contrast) in the below two New York Times articles.

Jodi Kantor and David Stretfeld, Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace, New York Times, August 15, 2015.
Charles Duhigg, What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team, New York Times Magazine, February 25, 2016.

Netflix's famous (or infamous!) culture slide desk (where workplace team is equated to sports team - always cut weak players and recruit stronger players) is below.

Netflix Culture: Freedom and Responsibility

Last update on July 24, 2023