computer science

Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory

Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory rather than just read about it. In short: The Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory (Observatory) was founded in 2005 by an EPSRC grant at the University of Sheffield. The Observatory is a multi-disciplinary collaboration between the Department of Computer Science and the Institute of Work Psychology at the University of Sheffield.

Key takeaways

Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory (Observatory) was founded in 2005 by an EPSRC grant at the University of Sheffield. The Observatory is a multi-disciplinary collaboration between the Department of Computer Science and the Institute of Work Psychology at the University of Sheffield.

Overview Its aim is to understand the processes that makes for good software engineering practice, and how are these needs to combine human and technical factors. The Software Engineering Observatory is an empirical software engineering research facility where researchers can use a variety of methodologies to study software developers working on real industrial projects. The software developers are students, both undergraduate and postgraduate and up to 20 group projects were undertaken each year. Thus, researchers can investigate how software developers work in teams, deal with industrial clients and handle the plethora of problems that arise in group projects with tight time-scales. A key feature is that the Observatory allows multiple teams to work on identical projects concurrently in competition with each other, which allows comparisons to be made of different software development processes. The Observatory enables researchers to gather data that are relevant to many of the key issues in contemporary software engineering, which will be of interest to both academics and practitioners. The implications of the results so far are that effective software managers must not just understand the technical aspects of the work that their staff are doing, but must also understand their staff as individuals and how they can best work together in teams.

Research areas The Observatory’s research agenda includes:

Assessing, through controlled experiments, the relative merits of software development methods and methodologies in terms of both the quality of output and the well-being of the developers. Devising empirically-based models of the processes that developers are observed to use Identifying the factors that make for good team-based software development, including leadership, the personality, skill, gender and ethnic mix of teams, and how task conflict can contribute, constructively, to enhanced performance. Investigating the relative importance of (a) the methodology adopted by the team and degree of fidelity to it, (b) the individual’s participant’s motivation and knowledge, and (c) team processes in accounting for variability in the performance of the group. The data from these experiments will be made available to bona-fide researchers in empirical software engineering.

History The Observatory was founded in 2005, however prior to that a number of PhD students designed experiments and collected data on the software engineering process. These were all based on the pioneering taught courses devised at the University of Sheffield

References

External links Software Observatory homepage epiGenesys - a University of Sheffield company

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory

In research: Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Software engineering organizations, University of Sheffield, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory in simple terms?

Why does Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Sheffield Software Engineering Observatory.