Holistic case study approach to Ada based software engineering training

Abstract

The award of the Combat Submarine (BSY-2) contract to GE has challenged the Government Electronic Systems Division (GESD) in terms of involvement in the single largest Ada oriented project development to date in the world. The total project is faced with a development effort exceeding 2,200,000 lines of Ada code to be implemented by a community of software engineers totaling 900. The Government Electronic Systems Division at Moorestown, NJ, with its current staff of approximately 200 software engineers involved with on-going projects, is faced with significant numbers of additional engineers to hire that need to be integrated into the existing software engineering staff. The combined new staff is challenged with new methodologies, design, standards and Ada.

The training campaign is critical as a strategic element in the successful Ada software engineering effort of this fixed price contract. This paper will detail a fundamentally different approach in the training of engineers and engineering managers into a significantly new environment.