Teaching Soft Skills in a Systems Development Capstone Class Jack Russell jrussellnsula.edu Barbara

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Teaching Soft Skills in a Systems Development
Capstone ClassJack Russelljrussell_at_nsula.eduB
arbara Russellbrussell_at_nsula.eduNorthwestern
State UniversityNatchitoches, LA 71497William
J. TastleTastle_at_Ithaca.eduIthaca, New York
14850
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Abstract Summary

• Unquestionably, there is agreement between
  industry and educators that soft skills should be
  emphasized with the IS curriculum more.
• A more rigorous approach to teaching soft skills
  within the IS curricula is needed.
• The IS 2002 Model Curricula emphasizes its
  importance in the IS 2002-10 course
• The authors recommend specific behavioral
  objectives be identified and taught across the IS
  curriculum, and especially in a capstone IS
  experience centered on team performance.

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Introduction

• Industry leaders have told the same story for
  many years that what they are looking for in a
  new grad is
• An ability to communicate effectively both orally
  and in writing.
• A desire and evidence of ability to work
  effectively within a team.
• An ability to solve problems creatively.
• An ability to make decisions.

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Questions Recruiters Often Ask

• Tell me about the team project that you
  completed?
• How were you able to motivate others on the team
  to carry out their job?
• Tell me about the team you worked with a X-Mart
  the summer while doing your internship, and what
  leadership role did you play during this period?
• Can you provide an example of how your team
  resolved an issue?
• Can you describe an example of how you were able
  to resolve conflict within the team that may have
  come up during the project?

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New Graduates' Soft Skills Critical to Mission
Critical Projects using New Technologies

• Industry sees that the students ability to
  communicate, ability to cooperate, and ability to
  work in diverse environments are critical skills
  needed to succeed in todays fast paced
  profession of IS.
• Because of the new grads technical prowess in
  new cutting-edge technologies they are even more
  likely to be cast into leadership roles on
  mission critical projects.
• As educators we continue to fall short in making
  sure these new high demand grads with strong
  technical skills will have the interpersonal
  skills needed to perform well within a mission
  critical corporate IS team.

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More Formal Instruction Should Be Devoted to Soft
Skills in the Classroom

• A more rigorous approach to the teaching of soft
  skills with the IS curricula is needed, says
  Carol OBrien from JC Penney.
• On the average students spend less than 1/1000 of
  their college study time actually engaged in
  enhancing their interpersonal and teaming skills.
• Students spend approximately 5700 hours preparing
  for an IS degree with only 4 of those hours
  typically devoted to soft skill behavioral
  objectives.

Howard 2002, Lauckner 2002, McGinnis 2001
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Soft Skills Most Sought After by Industry

• Demonstrate effective interpersonal relations.
• Demonstrate self-management strategies.
• Work within teams.
• Creatively solve problems.
• Make Decisions.

www.CompanyCollege.com
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Social Skills are Needed to Enable a New Hire to

• Cooperate with others.
• Interact within the work place.
• Advance to new positions and responsibilities
  within the company.

Obrien 2002
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To Advance to New Positions the IS Professional
must be able to

• Cooperate
• Accept supervision
• Work within diverse environments
• Resolve conflict.
• Provide supervision for others.

(Owen 2001) (Schatzberg 2003)
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Demonstrating Self Management Strategies Requires
the Ability to

• Display responsible personal behaviors.
• Display responsible work behaviors and time
  management effectively.
• Display the ability to solve problems effectively
  and creatively.
• Display an ability to make decisions when
  necessary.

www.ed.psu.edu 2004
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Teaming and Soft Skills in a Capstone CIS Course
with Robust and Challenging Learning Outcomes
Teaming
Present ing
Tactical Data Collection Interview
Strategic Data Collection Interview
Presenting the Proposal
Presenting the Design Spec
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Continued

• Teaming builds both leadership skills and ability
  to listen and follow the leadership of others (US
  Dept of Labor, 2004)
• Encourage students to get involved in campus
  student groups or associations that enable to
  hone teaming skills.
• Capstone experience enables students to further
  develop soft skills by involvement in a contrived
  CASE study requiring deliverables from each
  project phase.

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A Model IS Capstone Systems Development Course
Addressing the Soft Skills

• Course designed using the IS Model Curriculum IS
  2002-10 course.
• Covers the management of the entire project life
  cycle.
• Systems Requirements
• Business Modeling
• System Design
• Implementation
• System and Database Integration.
• Project Tracking and Staffing.

2002 IS Model Curriculum Davis et.al. 2002
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IS 2002 IS Model Curriculum Supports Soft Skills
in IS 2002 -10

• IS professionals must have a broad business and
  real world perspective (see Tastle and Dumdum
  2000).
• IS professionals must have strong analytical and
  critical thinking skills.
• IS professionals must have strong interpersonal
  communication and team skills. Students must
  understand that
• IS requires successful collaboration as well as
  successful individual efforts.
• IS design and management demands excellent
  communication (oral, written, and listening)
  skills.
• IS requires curiosity, creativity, risk taking,
  and a tolerance of these abilities in others.

2002 IS Model Curriculum Davis et.al. 2002
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The Course ObjectivesThe Authors Class

• Complete a series of class diagrams and "use
  case" diagrams for an understanding of the
  object-oriented analysis paradigm and a series of
  ERDs and DFDs for a deeper understanding of
  structured analysis.
• Conduct "mock" data collection interviews
  (O'brien 2003) based on the semester project
  narrative.
• Participate as a team member in a semester
  project.
• Complete a feasibility analysis and report. This
  will also include a payback analysis.
• Complete the ERD for the semester projects
  business narrative using the selected CASE tool
  for the semester.
• Complete the Decomposition Diagram and Data Flow
  Diagrams for the business narrative using the
  selected CASE tool.

CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
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Objectives Continued

• Compose and present the proposal to perform
  systems design.
• Design the business system. The deliverables
  will include graphical user interface design,
  navigation design, database design and program
  design.
• Present the System Specification to the class.
• Develop the code for the program design using an
  acceptable development platform (VB.Net, VB 6.0,
  C, JAVA, COBOL or Oracle Developer, for
  example).
• Demonstrate the system functionality as in a
  presentation format.

CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
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Behavioral Outcomes

• Confidence in speaking before a group.
• An ability to exercise diplomacy during the
  interview process by being aware of positive body
  language (eye contact, smile, facial nod, and
  hand gesture), positive choice of power words and
  positive speaking mannerisms.
• The ability to introduce others properly with
  sound body language and to convey the purpose of
  the meeting/interview session succinctly.
• The ability to ask open-ended, closed-ended and
  probing questions that enhance effective data
  gathering while maintaining positive rapport with
  the user.

CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
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Course Syllabus
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Behavioral Outcomes Continued

• The ability to work and cooperate effectively
  with others by learning to appreciate the ideas
  of others and to respect the opinion of others.
• The ability to listen more effectively as well as
  exhibit or reflect these listening skills through
  proper listening body language and listening
  gestures.
• The ability to help organize a project.
• The ability to resolve conflict with others by
  negotiation techniques and patience.

CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
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The Data Collection Interview and Team Role
Playing

• Student teams are required to respond to the user
  request by conducting 2 data collection
  interviews.
• First interview is a mock strategic interview
  with high to mid-level management (role played by
  student team members also).
• Team members switch hats and play the other role
  of analyst or management.
• Interviews are filmed.

CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
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Student Interview
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(No Transcript)
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Teams Develop a Systems Proposal and Make
Presentation

• Teams develop a systems requirements statement.
• Teams write a systems proposal document. This
  document must follow the Chicago Style format.
  It must be well written. Students will be
  penalized for typos, structural or organizational
  problems and grammatical errors.
• Teams prepare a Powerpoint presentation for the
  proposal.
• Students practice and present the stand-up
  proposal to the class.

CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
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Proposal
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Evaluation of Proposal
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Group Evaluation of Proposal
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The Required Deliverables of Each Team

• Strategic Interview Report
• Feasibility Analysis Report and Project Work Plan
• Tactical Interview Report
• Requirements Statement
• Business Model (data model and process model OR
  UML model)
• General GUI design prototypes

CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
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Students Must Present the System Specification

• Interface design
• DBMS design
• Program design (structure charts, action
  diagrams, pseudo code or flowcharts)

CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
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Team Presentations Outline

• Interviews I and II (Both Strategic and Tactical)
• Properly introduce oneself to management.
• Adequately and succinctly describe the purpose of
  the interview.
• Briefly describe the user request.
• Gain an understanding of the true nature of
  existing problems of the current business system
  by using a structured interview technique.

CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
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Systems Proposal

• Feasibility Analysis and Work Plan (Realistically
  would have been done prior to this presentation
  but included because of time constraints).
• Systems Requirements presented.
• Review of business model.
• Initial interface prototype

CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
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Final Project Presentation

• Systems specification review of systems design
  (complete interface design, database design and
  program design).
• Final demo of subprogram functionality such as
  "Take Order" or "Take Rental." The key point is
  that it must be a central activity within the
  business system, and must be a significant and
  non-trivial programming activity.

CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
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The Process of Forming Teams

• A pool of team leaders is elected by the class at
  large. If a class requires 5 teams, then 5
  leaders are chosen.
• Each student is asked to submit a professional
  resume. This resume is to replicate a job
  resume.
• The team leaders, with the instructor, will
  review each student resume.
• Each team leader will be allowed to select a team
  member in a round robin process. Once all team
  leaders have chosen one team member from the
  resumes remaining then the process starts over
  with each team leader choosing a second team
  member and subsequently a third team member.

CIS 4600 Advanced Systems Development,
Northwestern State University
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An Alternative Team Selection Process

• Team leaders interview the remaining students in
  the class.
• Team leaders rank interviewees from 5 (highest)
  to 1 (lowest).
• The number of 5 scores given out must not be
  greater than the number of possible teams. For
  example, a class of 20 with an average team size
  of 4 would allow only 5 students receive a score
  of 5.
• The number of interviewees with a score of 4
  would also not exceed the number of teams and so
  forth.

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Continued

• Team leaders will assign at least one five, one
  four, one three etc to each team.
• Teacher encourages team leader to evaluate team
  members so that a diversely talented team is
  formed.
• Team leaders should possess motivational and
  organizational skills.
• Each team should have a synthesizer/analyzer
  along with an implementor.

(Cougar, 1983)
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Selecting a Team Leader

• Teacher interviews students who are interested in
  being the team leader.
• Offers a bonus package for playing the role of
  team leader.
• Teacher selects the team leader based on their
  ability to motivate, lead and organize and who
  have a well rounded academic record.

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Evaluating the Teams and Individuals

• Students receives an individual performance
  grade along with a team performance grade for
  each phase of the project. An arithmetic average
  score is derived from the two.
• Students receives a peer performance evaluation
  from each of their team members. A numeric score
  is derived from the Likert score A(from 4.5 to
  5) B(from 4.0 to 4.4) etc.
• The peer evaluation counts for 10 of the
  students over-all grade.

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Peer Evaluation Page 1
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Peer Evaluation Page 2
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Peer Evaluation Page 3
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Conclusion

• The authors propose that greater emphasis be
  placed on soft skill learning experiences within
  the IS curriculum.
• Best to incorporate these experiences throughout
  the course structure.
• Recommend the inclusion of a capstone course that
  emphasizes the soft skills.
• Require students to perform an interview.
• Require students to perform an in class
  presentation (possibly a feasibility analysis or
  a system proposal..or both).
• Require students to submit a formal written
  proposal free of grammatical errors, typos, etc.

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Conclusion -- continued

• Teacher should hold meetings with teams when
  there is conflict. Teachers should help the team
  work through the process of resolving the
  conflict, but do not fix the problem for them.

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Times up
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Questions?