CS-E4920 - Portfolio in Software and Service Engineering, Lecture, 27.8.2024-7.5.2025

Your task is to conduct an interview with a recently graduated SSE student. The purpose of the task is to collect experiences on doing the thesis work. Start this task at least two weeks before the deadline.

Start by browsing through theses from SSE. 

• You can find theses from Aaltodoc
• Choose: Master's theses
• Browse: By Degree programme/Major subject
• Filter: software and service engineering
• An example of an advanced search: dc.programme.major: "Software and service engineering" AND (dc.date.issued: 2024 OR dc.date.issued: 2023)

Select an interesting, recent thesis, and contact the author, e.g. in LinkedIn, for arranging an interview about his/her experiences in doing the thesis. If you don't get an answer quickly, contact another author. The interview can be done remotely or f-2-f.

During the interview, your task is to find out at least the following:

• How did you get the Master's thesis topic and position?
• When did the thesis work start? When did it end?
• What kind of support you got from the supervising professor?
• What kind of support you got from the company?
• How did you balance your other work duties and thesis work?
• What did you learn from the thesis?
• Any tips for those students who are about to start their thesis?

Furthermore, you may use this opportunity of talking with an SSE alumni to ask any other tips related to the SSE studies in general. 

In addition to the interview, or even before the interview, study the thesis itself. If the PDF is not available in the library database, ask for it from the author. Analyze the thesis from the following viewpoints:

• What was the research problem or goal in the thesis?
• What kind of a company was involved in the thesis?
• What were the results or conclusions?
  

Prepare a 10-minute presentation for the Contact Session I about your findings, and submit the slides to MyCourses. Start by describing the thesis itself, and thereafter describe the experiences behind doing the thesis. All the presentation slides will be shared with all the course students. Presentations are given in small groups in 2-4 parallel sessions.

This task is done individually.

Let's use the this GoogleSheet to avoid contacting the same thesis authors multiple times.