From: davidal@comm.mot.com (UK702 DavidAlexander)
Subject: Re: Why is the Software Process NOT working
Organization: Motorola Land Mobile Products Sector
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 15:35:43 GMT

In article <peterd.728072986@pjd.dev.cdx.mot.com>, peterd@pjd.dev.cdx.mot.com (Peter Desnoyers) writes:
|> davidal@comm.mot.com (UK702 DavidAlexander) writes:
|> 
|> >In article <1k1tasINNan0@andre.d.umn.edu>, kpierce@andre.d.umn.edu (Keith Pierce) writes:
|> >|> I believe that University courses CAN teach students
|> >|> industrial-strength processes, because I've been doing it.
|> >|> 
|> >|> I teach the senior project-based software engineering course at my
|> >|> institution.  A few years ago I began basing the project on maintaining
|> >|> a large software product. And I carried the project across terms,
|> >|> requiring each class to work with the product as it was left by the
|> >|> previous class.
|> 
|> >I am quite willing to believe that lecturers that have current experience
|> >of commercial projects are able to teach good software engineering
|> >practice.
|> 
|> If the lecturer in the example above had "current experience of
|> commercial projects", they would have spent a year instead of 15
|> weeks[*], including one month arguing over politics and 4 months buying
|> an expensive CASE tool, drawing a lot of bubble diagrams, and then
|> throwing away the results.
It is true that University projects have to be scaled down and I firmly
approve of a maintainance project (that's what we spent most of our time
on in the real world). Is you scale down the project should you necessarily
do in by cutting out stages of development? Cutting down the quantity of
code would be more useful. Even if it is decided, that 1/10 of the time
in politics and 1/3 of the time drawing useless bubbles is a waste of time,
a lecturer with practical experience would/should point out that that is
what the working world is all about.

|> I would submit that the example shows that the lecturer had a good
|> understanding of the _scale_ of current commercial projects, and a
|> good understanding of current _academic and theoretical_ techniques.
My statement was not intended to pass comment on the skills and knowledge
of the original poster but rather to point out that he was more the
positive exception than the norm.

|> 
|> Now if we could just start using those techniques in industry...
|> 
|> >What I doubt are that those who have spent their lives in further 
|> >education or whose experience is number of years old. They might be
|> >able to teach theory to pass exams but I doubt they have a sufficiently
|> >robust approach to go further.
|> 
|> Oh, but unless your knowledge is at least a decade old you can't be a
|> principle engineer in industry. After all, you can't have people who
|> remember the fundamentals of the discipline being in charge of
|> design...
The difference between technological knowledge and engineering skills is
one which this thread must make. Study breeds the former and experience the
letter. My argument lies in the statement that both must be present in
a lecturer in order to successfully teach a course on the subject of
software engineering.

The problems of persons living in ivory towers never discovering or
forgetting  pragmatic engineering skills and being unable to make
on-the-job judgements of new technology are both detrimental to
teaching ability. (this is all also true of management)



The opinions expressed above are mine and not necessarily Motorola's (yet).
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