OMSE Exchange: A Software Engineering Clearing House

by Kal Toth, Portland State University and Josh Boelter, Intel Corporation

What is OMSE Exchange?
The Oregon Master of Software Engineering (OMSE) at Portland State University in the Department of Computer Science is an advanced degree designed for working software engineering professionals. To enrich the program, OMSE recently established OMSE Exchange, a software engineering knowledgebase and collaboration area designed to advance the state of software engineering education and practice in our community.

OMSE Exchange was designed to facilitate collaboration among software engineering professionals, students and university faculty members. It will simultaneously bring productivity and software quality benefits to the software engineering community.

OMSE Exchange includes a collection of technical software engineering best practices designed to progressively evolve as students, faculty, industry participants and alumni work together and exchange ideas on a broad range of practical real-world software engineering problems and solutions. We are growing a comprehensive base of typical problems, process models, guidelines, white papers, solution strategies, methods, tools, templates, standards and samples covering the complete lifecycle. Requirements and design specifications, code fragments, test procedures and plans will be included.

OMSE Exchange supports collaborative discussion forums (blogs) and uses Wiki technology which allows OMSE members and affiliates to contribute freely to the site.

How does OMSE Exchange benefit participants?
The site has been specifically designed to encourage open and expanding participation across the software engineering community. At the same time, OMSE Exchange has been configured to facilitate continuous evolution and improvement so that the relevant knowledge, ideas and artifacts can be easily commented, discussed, improved and extended to cover the full range of software engineering best practices. We believe this will bring many direct benefits to those who visit and exploit this site.

Industry: Industry can access useful templates, guidelines, tools and sample plans, use cases, designs, code and test cases. These could help them get up to speed or improve the way they currently conduct software development projects. Practitioners are able to describe the nature of their problems and needs and offer their ideas and practices to students and faculty. The site also facilitates collaboration of sponsored practicum projects and internships, thereby establishing links to students and faculty.

Students: OMSE Exchange is designed to keep pace with “real-world” problems, giving the students tremendous added value to offer their future careers and employers. Through the site we plan to grow the number of realistic software problems and solution approaches, which will enable the students to hone their practical software knowledge and skills. They will have access to many useful software engineering artifacts and tools that they will be able apply immediately to assignments at work.

Faculty: OMSE Exchange will enhance and streamline teaching – significantly strengthening the curriculum. Sample problems and solutions of current and emerging industry problems will greatly enhance learning. And access to qualified software engineering tools across the software lifecycle will allow faculty to demonstrate a broader range of best practices in class. Exchange will also strengthen relationships with industry and provide consultative and research opportunities.

"The OMSE Exchange provides access to the collective knowledge of OMSE students, alumni and faculty and working professionals like you," said Josh Boelter, a software engineer and recent OMSE graduate. "As a student, the site provided insight into the experiences and challenges encountered by working professionals and allowed me to interact and actively participate in providing solutions and recommendations. As a fellow practitioner, OMSE Exchange provides access to an interactive environment to work with others, and a constantly evolving collection of best known methods, templates and experiences from other practitioners, students and faculty. Tapping into the shared knowledge and experiences allows you to skip ahead on the learning curve without having to reinvent or spend time learning through costly trial and error."

How to participate
If this article has stimulated your interest in OMSE Exchange, please visit our site at http://www.omse.pdx.edu (click on “OMSE Exchange”). You will be able to browse the best practices area freely and anonymously. Should you wish to participate collaboratively, you may sign up as an affiliate – there are no fees for participating.

About the Authors
Dr. Kal Toth, associate professor in Portland State University's Department of Computer Science, is the associate director of the Oregon Master of Software Engineering (OMSE) program. Mr. Josh Boelter is a software engineer at Intel Corp. who recently completed the Oregon Master of Software Engineering program. Kal can be contacted at ktoth@cs.pdx.edu or see http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~ktoth/. Josh can be contacted at joshua.boelter@intel.com.