Design, Develop, Create

Syllabus 2023-2024

Course: MIS41020 Design, Development, Creativity

  • Welcome to "Design, Development, Creativity". I am Allen Higgins (more about me on https://people.ucd.ie/allen.higgins).
  • Classes are held in E117; the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business located at UCD's Blackrock campus, on Thursdays from 14:00 to 16:00.

Notices:

  • Slides and files are accessed from the module in UCD Brightspace https://brightspace.ucd.ie/ (login required).
  • Please note that the organisation of this course, the readings, exercises and other material will be revised continuously.
  • Students have to abide by the provisions of the "UCD Student Code". 
  • All deliverables, whether individual or group, must comply with UCD policies on "Academic Integrity" and "Plagiarism". 
  • All communication and interaction with each other should be respectful, professional, and comply with the school protocols. 

Module Description

Learning Outcomes

  • Identify processes and practices involved in software design and delivery (Context)
  • Describe software lifecycles and frameworks, covering historical and emerging management approaches to design and development (Management tools)
  • Interpret theoretical foundations of design, development lifecycles, and frameworks (Theoretical interpretation)
  • Critically evaluate the processes, activities, and practices necessary for design and development (Critical perspective)
  • Competently analyse, assess and act in industry cases; adapting methods, processes and practices to problematic situations (Research/analysis)
  • Acquired skills and tools to foster processes of joint design, development and quality assurance (Management skills)
Digital design and development are the innovation engine of technology enabled organisations. However, the collaborative design, development, production, deployment and operation of robust technological systems presents significant challenges for management and teams. This module reviews contemporary methods, practical techniques and skills for managers, developers and contributors

Our focus will be on techniques and processes for managing software design and development to deliver value. We review the challenges for management of distributed, virtual, team-based software design and development. Strategies for managing the collective creative process range over traditional sequential engineering methods through to agile, lean, and adaptive approaches. How do these socio-cultural practices (lifecycles and methodologies) balance tensions between the expectation for orderly production versus the need to creatively respond to changes? What theories inform an understanding of empirical personal, team, and management practices?

Topics encompass: the requirements process, the dynamics of creativity, understanding knowledge, communication, and performance in teams, development, deployment and maintenance perspectives. We review methodologies from agile to waterfall: e.g. kaizen, scrum, extreme programming, Kanban, lean, design thinking, SDLC, PDCA, Spiral, CMMI, RUP etc.

On completion of this module you should be able to understand and work productively within an organisation's software development methodology. You will have a practical appreciation of the value of organisational practices and contexts.

Goals
Outcomes
(see above for definition)
How Assessed
(see assessment section)
Core Business Knowledge
Context
Management tools
In-class exercises: discussion of cases, online posts – not graded.
Learning report
Term-Paper
Examination
Presentation video/slides
Communication Skills
Research/analysis
Management skills
Writing, oral, and media outputs
In-class exercises: discussion of cases, online posts – not graded.
Learning report
Term-Paper
Examination
Presentation video/slides
Analytical Skills
Theoretical interpretation
Critical perspective
Research/analysis
In-class exercises: discussion of cases, online posts – not graded.
Learning report
Term-Paper
Examination
Presentation video/slides
Global Perspective
Implicit
Not assessed
Ethical Perspective
Implicit
Not assessed
Life-long Learning
Implicit
Not assessed

Assessment

  1. 65% Combined Term-Paper (5,000 words) + Presentation (video up to 5 minutes max) + 1-page Personal Learning Reflection included as an appendix. The presentation video is due end of week 10. The final Term Paper is due end of week 12.
  2. 10% Group Activity during term.
  3. 25% Homework assignments during term.
Note: Any grades provided during term are provisional and subject to the exam board process.

Bookclub

Please purchase a copy of: Tracy Kidder, (1981) The Soul of a New Machine (e.g. ISBN 0316491977). Part of our class time will spent in a Bookclub format where we read and comment on "The Soul of a New Machine".  We read this book from cover to cover. It is ~283 pages long and should take 8-10 hrs to read (a limited number of copies are available to borrow from the UCD library).  
The remainder of the readings for this class are freely available via the UCD Library, in digital form or published online. 

Experiential Learning Exercises

Some of the following activities may be run in class as experiential learning exercises.

  • Exercise: World Café - a method to learn from and harness the power of groups.
  • Exercise: Timeless issues for software - NATO conference proceedings (group research) 
  • Exercise: Researching for designing - the research methods exercise (IDEO cards)
  • Exercise: Guindon design activities
  • Exercise: A standup meeting
  • Exercise: Construction & design (build bot race)
  • Exercise: Creative problem solving part 1 & part 2 (programming a robot)
  • Exercise: Retrospective
  • Exercise: Requirements design trade-off
  • Exercise: Estimating user stories
  • Exercise: Battleship - planning
  • Exercise: Defining a system
  • Exercise: Sutton's creative strategies
  • Exercise: Creative workplace assessment
  • Exercise: Design a search page
  • Exercise: Design a text-free search interface
  • Exercise: Design for search by smell
  • Exercise: Constructing systems descriptions: The Avalanche case
  • Exercise: Group reading - Kaptelinin, V., Nardi, B. A. & Macaulay, C. (1999) The activity checklist: a tool for representing the “space” of context. interactions, 6, 27-39.

Syllabus (subject to revision)

[version dated 22/11/2023]

Section 1 : Introduction - Thinking in Systems
  • (The Soul of a New Machine) book club - Prologue
  • Homework for before next class 
    • 0. Media consent form signed
    • 1a. Podcast media - two ideas (music, cover art)
    • 1b. Notes on next week's readings
Section 2 : Thinking Like a Designer - Build the right thing
  • (The Soul of a New Machine) book club - chapters 1 and 2
  • Exercise - World Café
  • (Readings) 
    • Moggridge, B. (1999) Expressing Experiences in Design
    • Greenberg, S. & Buxton, B. (2008) Usability Evaluation Considered Harmful (Some of the Time)
  • Homework for before next class 
    • 2a. A photo - design 'in the wild'
    • 2b. Notes on next week's readings
Section 3 : Act Like a Designer - Observe, sketch, tinker, make
  • (The Soul of a New Machine) book club - chapter 3
  • Guest interview
  • (Readings)
    • Battarbee, K., Suri, J. F., and Howard, S. G. (2014). Empathy on the edge: scaling and sustaining a human-centered approach in the evolving practice of design.  
    • IDEO (2015). The Little Book of Design Research Ethics.
  • Exercise - The Deep Dive
  • Exercise - The Avalanche Case – A product owner’s perspective
  • Homework for before next class 
    • 3a. A short (<60 second) time-lapse video of technology 'in-the-wild'
    • 3b. Notes on next week's readings
Section 4 : Design Processes - The lifecycle concept
  • (The Soul of a New Machine) book club - chapters 4 & 5
  • Guest interview
  • (Readings)
    • Royce, W.W. (1970) Managing Development of Large Software Systems
    • Foote, B. & Yoder, J. (2000) Big Ball of Mud. IN HARRISON, N., FOOTE, B. & ROHNERT, H. (Eds.) Pattern languages of program design 4. Addison Wesley.
  • Exercise - Writing and citing for research
  • Homework for before next class 
    • 4a. Conduct a cultural probe
    • 4b. Notes on next week's readings
Section 5 : Parameters of Development - Build the thing right
  • (The Soul of a New Machine) book club - chapter 6
  • Guest interview
  • (Readings)
    • Raccoon, L. B. S. (1995) The chaos model and the chaos cycle. ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, 20, 12.
    • Larman, C. and Basili, V. R. (2003). Iterative and incremental development:a brief history. Computer, 36(6):47–56.
  • Exercise: The Guindon design experiment
  • Homework for before next class 
    • 5a. Test a protocol for a chosen research method
    • 5b. Notes on next week's readings
Section 6 : Frameworks for Control - Institution as identity
  • (The Soul of a New Machine) book club - chapters 7 & 8
  • Guest interview
  • (Readings) 
    • Brooks Jr., F. P. (1987) No Silver Bullet Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering. Computer, 20, 10-19.
    • Fishman, C. (1996) They Write the Right Stuff. Fast Company.
  • Exercise - Sketching Designs
  • Homework for before next class   
    • 6a. A 'first draft' proposing your research topic
    • 6b. Notes on next week's readings
Section 7 : AGILE - The great disruption
  • (The Soul of a New Machine) book club - chapters 9 & 10
  • Guest interview
  • (Readings) 
    • Beck, K. (1999) Embracing Change with Extreme Programming. Computer, 8.
    • Kruchten, P. (2007) Voyage in the Agile Memeplex. ACM Queue, 5, 38-44.
  • Exercise - Unfocus Group using LEGO Serious Play (LSP)
  • Homework for before next class 
    • 7a. Find 2 relevant references
    • 7b. Notes on next week's readings
Section 8 : Harnessing Creativity - Design cultures
  • (The Soul of a New Machine) book club – chapters 11 & 12
  • Guest interview
  • (Readings)  
    • Hargadon, A. B. & Bechky, B. A. (2006) When Collections of Creatives Become Creative Collectives: A field study of problem solving at work. Organization Science, 17, 484-500.
    • Catmull, E. 2008. How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity. Harvard Business Review, 89, 9.
  • Exercise - Standup meeting - your own research project
  • Exercise - Sutton's creative strategies
  • Homework for before next class 
    • 8a. Initial Data Appendix
    • 8b. Notes on next week's readings
Section 9 : Design Communities - Working with the project paradigm
  • (The Soul of a New Machine) book club - chapters 13 & 14
  • Guest interview
  • (Readings) 
    • Henrik Kniberg and Anders Ivarsson. Scaling agile@ spotify with tribes, squads, chapters & guilds. White Paper, 2012.
    • Ralph, P. and Oates, B. J. (2018). The dangerous dogmas of software engineering. arXiv preprint arXiv:1802.06321.
  • Exercise - Requirements/Design Tradeoffs
  • Exercise - Battleship
  • Homework for before next class
    • 9a. Post audio file (mp3) of a personal statement "Design is..." (approx. 30s long)
    • 9b. Notes on next week's readings
Section 10 : Managing as Designing - Enabling action without being the decision maker  
  • (The Soul of a New Machine) book club - chapters 15, 16 & Epilogue
  • Guest interview
  • (Readings)
    • Sawyer, S. (2004) Software development teams. Communications of the ACM, 47, 95 - 99.
    • Yoo, Y. et al (2006) From Organization Design to Organization Designing
  • Exercise - Estimating User Stories (the Planning Game)
  • Homework for before next class
    • 10a. Post an updated version of your CV with new skills
Section 11 : Always be Designing - What is, where is, who is designing?
  • Exercise - Standup meeting - progress on your own research project 
  • Exercise - Build a Robot Challenge
Section 12 : Video Presentations & Wrap-up
  • Video presentations
  • Course review

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