Project management and team productivity in an operating system development course
Abstract
System software development involves significant
coordination problems.
The coordination effort required to develop large operating systems can
be more than 90% of the total effort (Unger, Walker, 1977), (Brooks,
1975), (Aron, 1969). A major factor in programming coordination is the
interpersonal communciation process within a development team. This
paper describes an approach to increasing team productivity through external
intervention in the communication process. Experiences with four
instances of an undergraduate course which involves an operating
system development project are also described. Two of these development
projects involved intervention in the communication process by an
external facilitator. Estimates of the resulting programmer productivity
are presented for all four development projects.
Description
Keywords
Computer Science