Motivation Process Formalization and Its Application to Education Improvement for the Personal Software Process Course

Abstract

Masanobu UMEDA†a) , Nonmember, Keiichi KATAMINE †b) , Member, Keiichi ISHIBASHI † †c) , Nonmember, Masaaki HASHIMOTO †d) , Fellow, and Takaichi YOSHIDA †e) , Nonmember SUMMARY Software engineering education at universities plays an increasingly important role as software quality is becoming essential in realizing a safe and dependable society. This paper proposes a practical state transition model (Practical-STM) based on the Organizational Expectancy Model for the improvement of software process education based on the Personal Software Process (PSP) from a motivation point of view. The Practical-STM treats an individual trainee of the PSP course as a state machine, and formalizes a motivation process of a trainee using a set of states represented by factors regarding motivation and a set of operations carried out by course instructors. The state transition function of this model represents the features or characteristics of a trainee in terms of motivation. The model allows a formal description of the states of a trainee in terms of motivation and the educational actions of the instructors in the PSP course. The instructors are able to decide effective and efficient actions to take toward the trainees objectively by presuming a state and a state transition function of the trainees formally. Typical patterns of state transitions from an initial state to a final state, which is called a scenario, are useful for inferring possible transitions of a trainee and taking proactive operations from a motivation point of view. Therefore, the model is useful not only for improving the educational effect of the PSP course, but also for the standardization of the course management and the quality management of the instructors. key words: personal software process, motivation, state transition model, organizational expectancy model, education improvement IntroductionSociety depends on many devices and services realized by software. Software defects can lead to not only inconvenience and the loss of business opportunity but also problems relating to information security and safety. Software quality is essential to business success and a safe and dependable society.The Personal Software Process (PSP) [1], [2] developed by Watts S. Humphrey is a self-improvement process that a software engineer can employ to manage his/her own development process by him/herself and to improve his/her software quality using his/her own process data. To sat- * , significantly improved during the course. These results show that it is possible for graduate students to acquire knowledge and skills required for the improvement of software quality, and reveal that the PSP is an effective tool for such purpose. However, not all trainees were able to complete the course [10]. For example, only about 20 percent of the trainees completed the course in recent school years, while it is said that about 50 percent of experienced software engineers in industries complete. The low completion rate of the course is undesirable in terms of not only the inefficiency...