Handbook

What if companies claimed ownership of your personal details or photos and charged you to prevent them being made public? Or if devices were controlled by buggy software or software with potentially malicious backdoors? The pervasive nature of computing in today’s society puts a great deal of responsibility on IT professionals to maintain high ethical and quality standards and uphold the trust of the public. With software development being increasingly collaborative, ethical and professional practice also requires competence in communication, teamwork and project management. Professional bodies now consider all these essential competencies for engineering and computing professionals.

SENG4920 covers practical aspects of both software project management and professional issues and ethics, and as such is critical preparation for the workforce, in addition to being essential for accreditation of the Software Engineering, Computer Engineering and Bioinformatics degree programmes. Students enrolling should be in the final year of study or nearing completion of their computing degree.

This capstone course covers these professional skills and competencies through two main themes:

Software Project Management:

Through a group project, students will gain practical experience in all phases of the planning and execution of a software project, including requirements scoping, agile software process methodology, project planning and scheduling, teamwork and communication, and risk and change management.

Professional Issues and Ethics:

Students will gain an appreciation of the responsibilities of a professional software engineer and apply ethical theories and reasoning to IT industry issues such as software quality, privacy and security, intellectual property and legal obligations of IT practitioners.