Green-Lighting Proposals for Software Engineering Team-Based Project Courses

Many software engineering curriculum conclude with a practicum or capstone project course. For courses involving external clients, the course owner typically follows a Request for Proposal process to vet (or green-light) qualified clients and projects. Even though green-lighting projects does not guarantee project success, the goal is to reduce risks by systematically examining each proposal to identify potential problems that the instructor could solve, mitigate against, or simply decide not to deal with by rejecting the proposal. We propose and evaluate a Green-Lighting Approach based on the SEMAT (Software Engineering Method and Theory) Essence framework. Our objective is to identify if such a framework could improve the Request for Proposal process at Carnegie Mellon University in Silicon Valley and other universities. We conducted a case study by observing and interviewing the course owner, examining a group of proposals, and identifying issues with the current proposal process and practicum projects. We proposed a green-lighting project state that, based upon Essence Alphas, describes the minimal and ideal states that a project proposal should achieve to be accepted. The Green-Lighting Approach generated conversations among the faculty that clarified the guidelines for accepting and prioritizing proposals and identified deficiencies in our Request for Proposal. Additional work is required to refine the proposed Green-Lighting Approach based on current findings and further validate the approach. Using Essence for green-lighting practicum projects in academia presents some limitations. The framework does not explicitly factor in business forces that affect proposal selection, might be overly complex for the task, and might require modification with partial Alpha states. However, Essence provides a systematic approach for evaluating proposals based on various project dimensions. This approach could be used as an inspiration for deriving simpler custom green-lighting checklists.