Client-Centered Software Development: The CO-FOSS Approach

Client-Centered Software Development: The CO-FOSS Approach introduces a method to creating a customized software product for a single client, either from scratch or by reusing open source components. The clients are typically non-profit humanitarian, educational, or public service organizations. This approach has been used in undergraduate courses where students learn the principles of software development while implementing a real-world software product. This book provides instructors, students, clients, and professional software developers with detailed guidance for developing a new CO-FOSS product from conceptualization to completion.

Features

• Provides instructors, students, clients, and professional software developers with a roadmap for the development of a new CO-FOSS product from conceptualization to completion
• Motivates students with real-world projects and community service experiences
• Teaches all elements of the software process, including requirements gathering, design, collaboration, coding, testing, client communication, refactoring, and writing developer and user documentation
• Uses source code that can be reused and refitted to suit the needs of future projects, since each CO-FOSS product is free and open source software
• Provides links to a rich variety of resources for instructors and students to freely use in their own courses that develop new CO-FOSS products for other non-profits.

Allen B Tucker is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor Emeritus in the Computer Science Department at Bowdoin College. He is the author or co-author of many books and articles in the areas of programming languages, software development, natural language processing, and computer science education, and is an ACM Fellow. Professor Tucker is also Co-Founder and President of the Non-Profit FOSS Institute (NPFI), whose mission is to support the development and customization of free and open-source software to fit the needs of individual non-profit organizations.