[kplato] University collaboration : looking for mentors

[Dag Andersen]

Hello Kevin.
It would be great if something like this could come through. There are things 
that could be improved in kplato in every aspect, so finding projects 
shouldn't be too difficult :)
Unfortunately I don't think I can take the role as a mentor, but I will 
certainly help out as much as I possibly can!

-- 
Mvh
Dag Andersen

Torsdag 05 oktober 2006 09:38 skrev Kevin Ottens:
> Hello dear KPlato crew,
>
> == Executive summary ==
> We're about to have 2 groups of 10 students from my university working
> during several months on KDE related projects. KPlato is one of the
> selected projects, so we need a mentor to give them advices during this
> project, and track their progresses.
>
> == Detailed version ==
> First of all, I'll provide some background information. A few years ago I
> was a student in the Paul Sabatier University (Toulouse, France), the
> course I followed is called "Institut Universitaire Professionalisé en
> Ingénierie des Systèmes Informatiques" (IUP ISI) [ISI]. Now I'm preparing a
> PhD in this same university, and I'm teaching to IUP ISI students. IUP ISI
> is targetting computer engineering with a strong interest in project
> management.
>
> One of the originality of this course is that students have a group project
> at the end of each year, it's particularly interesting for the third and
> fourth year students, hence why I'll give some more details on this.
>
> The fourth year students start their group project around the middle/end of
> october. Each group has generally four or five students. They work on their
> project during two or three months : project planning, architecture,
> coding, testing. They generally have a prototype (semi-)working after this
> first phase.
>
> Then, each group get four or five more third year students joining until
> the end of the project (deadline is still two or three months away when it
> happens). Which means that each group has now around ten students working.
>
> Traditionally the proposed projects where very focused on ad hoc solutions
> for project and process management. Several tools for creating and managing
> processes were developed from scratch. Each year new tools were built on
> top of previous year products. For next year, they're planning to get ride
> of the past and build ad hoc tools around the Eclipse Process Framework
> [EPF].
>
> But, I also took this opportunity to push the idea to really collaborate
> with a free software project, hence why I'm writing this email: I think KDE
> should be this project. I've been allowed to organize such a collaboration.
> For this first test we won't have many projects, but KPlato is something
> the professor staff is interested in and which has been selected for this
> year.
>
> I think we should allocate at least one mentor for KPlato. Mentors will
> be supposed to issue a short evaluation of the students work each two or
> three weeks. A rough estimate about the design quality, use of tests, code
> quality, use of our tools (mailing lists, subversion, etc.) and interaction
> with the community will be asked. Of course, students will expect some
> guidance and advices. I don't expect much more will be required.
>
> Currently I proposed this initial goal lists for a KPlato group:
>  - Generally improve the GUI, I guess there's some to do
>  - PERT view
>  - Supporting project execution (maybe integrating with karm)
>
> Probably more could be done in the given timeframe (MS Project
> import/export for example), the list is not final yet and can evolve during
> the project. I provided something short and a bit vague on purpose, this
> way students have some freedom on what they'll work on, it'll have to be
> negociated with their professors and mentors though.
>
> So, if you feel like the right person to mentor such a student group,
> please step up. You might end up with new KPlato regular contributors in
> the end.
>
> Regards.
>
> [ISI] http://www.iup-ups.ups-tlse.fr/isi/ (sorry french only)
> [EPF] http://www.eclipse.org/epf/

-- 
Mvh
Dag Andersen