Programming Project with Open Source Code

Examination

Course examination

Passing the course requires fulfilling a number of criteria as listed below. A passing grade requires students to score at least on the lowest level in all categories and achieve a minimal score of 22 points.

The overall grade is determined by your score in the categories for each criterion. Each criterion is weighted, and the sum translates to your final grade.

Grading criteria

The project rating is calculated based on a number of categories as described below. Each category (Technical difficulty,Process difficulty) has three levels ("Easy", "Medium", "Hard") that translate into points according to the table below.

Level	Technical difficulty	Process difficulty	Development process	Individual contributions
Easy	6	3	4	8
Medium	12	6	8	16
Expert	18	9	12	24

Each category is further described by a number of attributes, and at the start of the project, the project-related attributes are translated to a common assessment for all projects. When choosing the level for each category, the most fitting descriptions will be selected. The course staff will assess whether your estimates of difficulty or contributions are accurate.

The sum of points will translate into a grade as follows:

• Grade 3: 21-34 points
• Grade 4: 35-48 points
• Grade 5: 49-63 points

Failure to meet the lowest criterion on any attribute, in any category, will result in failure to pass. You must at least fulfill the minimum requirements for each attribute.

Technical difficulty	Build and test environment	Domain knowledge requirements	Size
Easy	No configuration needed	No expertise apart from course-level knowledge required	50-400 KLOC, 0-3 external static libraries required.
Medium	File settings and manual build steps	A few specific new algorithms or tools to learn	400 KLOC-1MLOC, several components built and tested against both internal and external components
Hard	Custom configuration languages, build tools	Several weeks or months of study estimated for initial contributions	More than 1 MLOC, several components shipped in multiple versions with dependencies on each other as well as external components.


Process difficulty	Issue tracker	Documentation	Communications
Easy	Contains issues tagged as suitable for beginners	Contains guides and tutorials for new developers	Contains specific communication channels for new developers
Medium	Contains issues marked with difficulty	Contains introduction chapters and suggested readings in documentation	Contains open communication channels
Hard	No metadata on difficulty in issue tracker	No clear introduction to new developers	Restricted communication channels

Development process	Group contributions	Planning and reflection	Engineering practice
Easy	Shares code, tutorials and development tips to other members of the team. Actively participates in project meetings.	Creates a plan for each sprint with sufficient details to guide the work, amounting to a number of hours that correspond the amount of credits given by the course.	Uses the required set of tools and suggested practices for code contributions in the host project
Medium	Shares documentation and material, and also gives valuable feedback on others' contributions	Uses the plan actively and updates the plan to take into account new information and events	Takes care to follow established good practices in continuous development and testing
Hard	Actively helps team members improve, and provides tutorials or other help to team members	Uses external sources from the host project to validate the feasibility of the plan and to update accordingly	Contributes with general quality improvements for the process of developing, building and testing software in the project

Individual contributions	Quantity of code contributions	Complexity of code contributions	External communications
Easy	At least one contribution that has been accepted by the project.	Non-trivial code contribution	Has been able to communicate successfully with at least one developer in the external project on a suggested contribution
Medium	Several contributions that has been accepted by the project	Code contributions that solve different problems or a moderately challenging problem	Has participated in several discussions with project members before and after own contributions
Hard	Several types of contributions (e.g. new features, bug fixes or documentation) that has been accepted by the project	Code contributions that solve a challenging problem	Has successfully proposed new features to the project

Page responsible: Daniel Varro
Last updated: 2022-11-14