No office at the university, but progress nevertheless!
This morning we had a meeting with Sandahl, our supervisor at the university, and discussed the master thesis part of the project. The question the thesis will try to answer will be formulated as:
"What software metrics are relevant for a project manager developing a project according to the MSF process model?"
The first part of this will be to determine what software quality factors are relevant in the specified context ( {role: project manager, model: msf agile, [probably some other constraints added during work progress]} ). When the software quality factors have been determined, we have to find ways to measure them. This will be the part that will be covered in the master thesis. However, the other 3 steps (implementation in VSTS, implementation in TFS and implementation of the dashboard) will follow directly. Prototypes of the implementation will be developed parallell to the investigation to save some (calendar) time.
We will not get an office at the university. All offices were taken, and undergraduate students weren't prioritized when assigning offices to staff. This will imply some practical problems for Magnus and me to do our work, especially when the implementation phase will start. But I'm sure we'll manage it somehow.
A possible problem we see right now is that we perhaps will have some difficulties performing an empirical investigation. We would love to question software project managers in the industry today (and perhaps we could get some help from Microsoft) - we feel it is a necessary part of the investigation. We are afraid, though, that it will be both difficult and cumbersome to find people willing to participate in our investigation. However, we did get some names Sandahl suggested we should get in touch with. Magnus is working on that part right now.
We've ordered some previous master thesis from the library on the topic of software metrics, which I think will prove to be useful for our work.
The task to try to define what we mean by software metrics is almost completed. I've completed a draft which i will publicise soon on this blog. It still has to be reviewed by Magnus.
"What software metrics are relevant for a project manager developing a project according to the MSF process model?"
The first part of this will be to determine what software quality factors are relevant in the specified context ( {role: project manager, model: msf agile, [probably some other constraints added during work progress]} ). When the software quality factors have been determined, we have to find ways to measure them. This will be the part that will be covered in the master thesis. However, the other 3 steps (implementation in VSTS, implementation in TFS and implementation of the dashboard) will follow directly. Prototypes of the implementation will be developed parallell to the investigation to save some (calendar) time.
We will not get an office at the university. All offices were taken, and undergraduate students weren't prioritized when assigning offices to staff. This will imply some practical problems for Magnus and me to do our work, especially when the implementation phase will start. But I'm sure we'll manage it somehow.
A possible problem we see right now is that we perhaps will have some difficulties performing an empirical investigation. We would love to question software project managers in the industry today (and perhaps we could get some help from Microsoft) - we feel it is a necessary part of the investigation. We are afraid, though, that it will be both difficult and cumbersome to find people willing to participate in our investigation. However, we did get some names Sandahl suggested we should get in touch with. Magnus is working on that part right now.
We've ordered some previous master thesis from the library on the topic of software metrics, which I think will prove to be useful for our work.
The task to try to define what we mean by software metrics is almost completed. I've completed a draft which i will publicise soon on this blog. It still has to be reviewed by Magnus.
(http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torsk_%28sexk%C3%B6pare%29)