MSc Software Engineering Management (Full Time)

The requirement for products that rely on software continues to expand in all areas, from home-based multimedia equipment to embedded information systems.

The need to provide a quality product on time and within budget in an increasingly competitive market demands an understanding of not only the technology, but also the management of technological processes and the people involved. This course aims to satisfy the growing demand for employees with high-level skills.

The course incorporates the key components of the technical management of the software engineering process, including:

• requirements analysis and specification
• software development process, analysis and design
• project management and reporting
• quality assurance.

Emphasis is placed on the requirements of managing complex projects. This advanced course is primarily designed for computer graduates and current software engineers who wish to update or improve their skills in software engineering and manage complex software projects in industry.

Industrial focus

There may be opportunities for developing contacts with IT professionals in local businesses.

Course content

Software Process: This unit focuses on the fundamental activities associated with software development and assesses the waysin which these may be arranged as a software process model in response to differing development contexts.

Systems Project Management: You will study the techniques and theoretical concepts applicable to managing projects in an information technology or systems environment.

Business Analysis and Requirements Frameworks: This unit examines the importance of a consistent and accurate set of business requirements and assesses the extent to which particular requirements engineering models can be applied.

Quality, Standards and Process Improvement: This unit considers standards of practice, ethical, legal and social issues, not as a set of static documents but as a dynamic set of potential achievements.

Software Specification: You will look at the techniques of model-based specification that are appropriate for the iterative extraction and refinement of product requirements.

Agile Development: This unit explores the underlying principles of agile development. It aims to assess the extent to which they reduce the overheads of the software process while delivering higher degrees of system flexibility and customer satisfaction with product.

Software Metrics and Testing: The objective of this unit is to understand the issues of software reliability and risk analysis, together with the effective use of metrics.

Applied Software Project Management: You will examine the techniques and theoretical concepts applicable for planning, management, control and reporting of projects in software engineering.

Master’s Dissertation: The dissertation is expected to be an original, independent and critical piece of work exploring a current issue in software engineering management. You will be encouraged to co-operate with industrial, commercial or professional establishments.

Assessment

There are no formal examinations; instead, you will experience
individual, group, team and some self-assessments, seminar discussions and presentations.

Key career skills

Teamwork in the software industry, the management of quality processes, critical thinking and research skills, effective project management.

Projects/work experience

Pragmatic and real-world practice is embedded within the topics covered and the teaching. The course also incorporates practitioner views on the software industry.

Why Solent is special

• Considerable and effective use of activity-based learning empowers you to understand your learning expectations and standards, and so enhances the learning experience.
• You will have exclusive access to IT facilities of nearly 100 fully Novell-networked, IBM-compatible PCs. These operate with Windows NT and run specialist, state-of-the-art software and applications required for the course and in business.

Course length

September intake: 12 months full-time