Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
evaluations should be distributed test style, where there should be no conversation
and each student may document their own personal assessment of themselves and
their classmates with complete honesty. Only after all reports have been collected
should students have the opportunity to review the assessment of their peers. Peer
surveys describe the attributes of the student on a scale. The scale is fairly common
and is as follows:
• A—Always
• U—Usually
• S—Sometimes
• R—Rarely
• N—Never
The type of questions on the survey should revolve around the ethics and
activities, such as arriving for meetings on time and willingness to train team
members. The questions should not revolve around the individual's ability to
create specific code entities or utilize a certain piece of software. The flexibility of
these surveys, as well as the amount of data collected (especially from a large
class), could warrant the implementation of online automation of survey taking
and report generation (Clark et al.
2005
) (Fig.
13.5
).
13.2 Phase II: Object-Oriented Software Requirements
Specification
Object-oriented programming has been discussed in depth in previous chapters of
this topic and much material can readily be found elsewhere. For these reasons this
section will be oriented on practical and implementable documentation that can be
created by small teams within a short time frame. This does not mean that the
documentation will be lacking in benefit, as it will still be descriptive and relevant
to current software engineering fields, it will just be scaled back in scope and
complexity to allow for a greater coverage of the essential concepts.
Specification of a system is a daunting task that may seem impossible to cover
all the aspects of the system and every single caveat that may arise when applying
end users to the functional system. It very well is impossible to cover every aspect
of a system, but it is not impossible to create a best effort of understanding. The
proper breakdown of the system is essential for understanding and for docu-
menting your understanding. The following is a listing of the most important
aspects of a specification document:
1. System Overview: Provide the readers with a quick glance at what will be
presented in the project.
2. User Interfaces: How the user will interact with the final product.
3. Functional Description: Describe the functional aspects of the system.
