Education and Social Development of T-Shaped Software Engineers

DOI

10.2991/icmesd-18.2018.130How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Industrial Cluster, Informal Network, Technical and Skilled Talents, Tacit Knowledge

Abstract

A T-shaped engineer is one who has deep knowledge and skills in a particular discipline, and also has a working knowledge of other disciplines important to the engineering projects they contribute to. Many computer science departments graduate mostly I-shaped students. They have strong knowledge and skills in computer science (CS), but little knowledge and skills in other disciplines such as economics, management sciences, human factors, or physical sciences important to their organization’s projects. This paper summarizes my experiences with a large, diversified company, TRW, in addressing the challenge of broadening new I-shaped CS graduates to become full participants in TRW projects; learning about T-shaped engineers from Simon Ramo (the R in TRW); and deciding to early-retire from TRW to create a software engineering curriculum at USC that would produce more T-shaped MS graduates, and ultimately produce more T-shaped BS graduates. The paper proceeds to describe the resulting MS degree in CS, with specialization in Software Engineering, and particularly its real-client project course, in which teams of 6 students develop a software system satisfying the needs of a USC campus or neighborhood organization. This addresses some other shortfalls in undergraduate computer science students’ education, in which they perform and are evaluated as individuals vs. being effective team members, learning about pure computer science topics such as software algorithms, data structures, programming languages, compilers, operating systems, database management systems, programming, software testing and debugging. The team project course also exposes them to parts of a project’s life cycle that they rarely encounter as students: determining clients’ objectives and concepts of operation, negotiating and prioritizing requirements, prototyping user interfaces; formulating team project schedules; evaluating COTS products and cloud services; training the system’s users; and preparing the clients for evolving the system after its delivery. The paper also summarizes the evolution of the MS program and project course as software processes, clients, applications, components, and tools have evolved, as the program and project course have evolved since their inception in 1993, educating over 2000 students to become considerably more T-shaped and team-oriented than they were on arrival.

Copyright

© 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Barry Boehm
PY  - 2018/05
DA  - 2018/05
TI  - Education and Social Development of T-Shaped Software Engineers
BT  - Proceedings of the 4th Annual International Conference on Management, Economics and Social Development (ICMESD 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 745
EP  - 749
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icmesd-18.2018.130
DO  - 10.2991/icmesd-18.2018.130
ID  - Boehm2018/05
ER  -