Student Originated Software 1997-1998 Fall Quarter
		A Software Engineering Course at The Evergreen State College

Student Originated Software 1997 - 1998 Issue Scenarios for Software Developers Seven Scenarios 1. One team member on an accounting system development project keeps adding additional functionality and features to the software project. The features are of unusually high quality but they are not called for in the specification. Since the project is already late the other team members are beginning to lose patience with the team member. He responds by saying that the product will be of much higher quality if he is allowed to continue. 2. A software team has been working for over a year on an educational system based on the history of the United States. The system features many characters who describe what they are witnessing in their own words. There are also opportunities for the user to interact with the software, in effect taking part in historic decisions. The management team at the instigation of one of the developers recently made the decision to turn the software into a game instead of an educational system and has established an unrealistic schedule for its completion. The development team is somewhat divided; most think the decision is the wrong one although many are intrigued with the idea at the same time. 3. A software team is hard at work on a complicated web-based project for electronic commerce. Although the team keeps long and somewhat erratic hours one team member in particular seems to only work nights and weekends. Worse, she never seems to attend the group meetings. The other members of the team have been accommodating, filling her in via e-mail, etc. but this approach does not seem to be working: Several important milestones have been missed, tensions are arising and an e-mail war has erupted among the developers over who is to blame for this. 4. A team has been developing an database system for a customer in Europe. Therefore with the exception of one or two major reviews a year the communication has been taking place via e-mail. Unfortunately there is a deep difference of opinion on the software "look and feel" between the technical lead and the technical lead's manager and both of these people are communicating daily with the European customers. Although nothing irrevocable has occurred the team members feel that a major problem is brewing due to the mixed signals the team is sending. 5. A team has been developing a prototype system for eight months and is approximately 75% complete. The system is designed to support on-line review of engineering drawings from subcontractors. Although this sysetm could save the company a lot of money due to decreased travel costs upper management abruptly decided to cancel the project. Part of this reason apparently stems from the fact that a vendor has told upper management that they'll have off-the-shelf software to accomplish the same thing within six months and that these internal efforts are not cost-effective. 6. A software development team has been developing a live action computer game incorporating realistic physics and motion for nearly two years. The developers, many of whom have families, have prided themselves on the fact that the game is not violent. The company that has been developing the game has been recently sold to a company in Los Angeles. The L.A. management recently called the development team down to their headquarters and told them that the game would never sell because there was no violence in the game. They then instructed the team to introduce gratuitous violence to the game including graphic decapitation. 7. A team is developing a large web-based internal system for sharing corporate information. One team member spends almost all his time developing a set of software tools (such as scripts and special-purpose editors) for the system - rather than developing the system itself. Since these tools are not called out in the specification there is quite a bit of pressure on the developer to stop this effort. Moreover the other team members are skeptical that these tools will actually be used by anybody other than the lone developer.