Welcome to the Case Studies in Software Communication. This site contains case studies in software development, intended for use in software engineering and technical communication instruction. The focus of these cases is the important issue of written and oral communication in a software setting. Effective communication with clients, users, and other developers requires a variety of skills: an awareness of other "stakeholders" in the software process, a sense of initiative to engage them throughout development, the ability to analyze and critique documents, and the creativity and technical facility to produce documents for others. These case studies show student software engineers using their skills to grapple with complex communication problems. The intent is to bring their experiences to the classroom, so that more students can learn from them.
All material here comes from real software projects undertaken by undergraduate students at Michigan Technological University. All primary sources (such as meeting minutes, reports, and oral conversations) have been edited as little as possible, in order to stay close to the actual experiences of the students in these projects. The stories here are not sanitized or idealized "models" - some things clearly work well, others clearly do not, and still others have results that are open to debate. The point is to view them critically, to determine what was effective and what could have been done differently to achieve a better outcome.
Seabase I
The Seabase Project teams students from Computer Sciene, Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering on a Navy-sponsored design challenge to build a crane controller and platform capable of performing in rough waters.
Seabase II
The Seabase II project was a continuation of or in some ways a second attempt at the Seabase I work, where three teams from different departments were supposed to be coordinating to build hardware and software related to a model platform mounted crane on a ship and its controller. The team from the Computer Science department was responsible for the software that helps counter balance the crane's motion with respect to the wave motion that the ship experiences
Soilsim
The SoilSim Computer Science Senior Design project, under the direction of USDA Forest Service Research Ecologist Fritz Romanoff and Computer Science Professor Dave Voelker, aims to build an interactive educational tool to help middle school students learn soil ecology processes relative to the carbon-nitrogen cycle.