The development process used by researchers often seems to be random and unsystematic. A Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is often not considered, internal commenting is scarce, and external documentation take the form of erasure marks left on whiteboards. Configuration Management is paid lip-service, but is not standard practice. This paper examines some reasons behind the apparent large-scale non-adoption of software engineering in academic research. We also look at the effects on some project where it was adopted. Finally we present a new SDLC designed for the academic research environment, suggest an organisational structure to maximize the benefit to research students, academics, and the institution.

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Technical report details:

Andre Oboler, David McG. Squire and Kevin B. Korb, Why don’t we practice what we teach? Engineering Software for Computer Science Research in Academia, Tech. Report 2003/139, School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Monash University, Australia, 2003.