Thursday, May 21, 2009

Summer Plan

Google Summer of Code
During the summer, I will be doing the Google Summer of Code 2009. My project is to add Issues into Software ICU. The work include from collecting data from issue tracking system to produce end analysis to Software ICU. The data collection part is finished during spring. So the plan for this project is:
  1. Review the issue data sensor and install it to Hackystat projects
  2. Write DPD analysis for the issue analysis
  3. Add Telemetry streams about issues
  4. Add Issues to Software ICU
  5. Revise the system from head to toe
I expect two weeks for the last three tasks. That is 10 weeks. Google Summer of Code last for 14 weeks, so I will have 4 weeks to spare to wherever needed or to catch up in progress if any delay. For the midterm goal, The first two tasks should be finished and the third one should on the half of the way.

Master Thesis
The thesis is another important task for me this summer, probably the most important one. There are six chapters in my thesis. I might finish each one in one to two weeks. So it will take probably two month to have it done. During this, Philip will revise each chapter for me after I finish it. And I will go over it on the fly. If everything goes as planned, my thesis will be finish before August.

The first chapter I will work on is the related work. I am looking for more relative research on empirical engineering to fill up this chapter.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Summary of Spring 09 Semester

Brief Summary
The most of work relative to my thesis research or Hackystat was done in the first half of this semester. As the semester went on, I began to stuck in the two course I took, ICS606 and ICS621. The homework and projects began to accumulate and took me lots of time to accomplish. Thus, my total research and development output is somehow lower than previous semester, and the progress of my thesis is behind my expectation.

Achievement in Spring 09

Tech-report of Hackystat Classroom Evaluation in Fall 2008
In fall 2008, we deploy the Hackystat system in class projects of ICS413, together with a questionnaire survey near the end of the semester. Additionally, we gather log data of students' usage of the system. At the beginning of this semester, I started to review the result from the survey and analyze the log data, then wrote a tech-report of this evaluation. While the major component of this evaluation is the Software ICU, most of this tech-report will be able to go into somewhere of my thesis.

Seminar Presentation of Software ICU
This is one of the most important step in the progress to my thesis. It is a good chance to summarize the system. The slide can be found here. I spent a little more than a week to prepare the presentation. That was quite challenge to me because it was my first time to present to dozens of audiences. But the presentation came out to be a successful one. It really encourage me a lot.

Hackystat Manual Sensor
In Spring 09, my major development contribution to Hackystat is the manual sensor, relative posts can be find here, and here. It is a Java Swing application that let user manually input data to reflect their development activities which are not yet have Hackystat sensor attached. The current version is just as simple as a plain form plus a raw data viewer.

About My Thesis
In the last week, I have setup my plan to graduate in fall 2009. That means, the due day of my thesis will be sometime in the middle of October 2009. But I prefer to finish the stuff earlier, just in case accident happens. My plan is to finish my thesis before Auguest, and then defensive it in early Sepetember.

Here is the draft of my thesis, which would like to be considered as the technical report for this semester's independent study.