Qualifying Software Engineers Undergraduates in DevOps - Challenges of Introducing Technical and Non-technical Concepts in a Project-oriented Course

Abstract

A bstract-The constant changes in the software industry, practices, and methodologies impose challenges to teaching and learning current software engineering concepts and skills. DevOps is particularly challenging because it covers technical concepts, such as pipeline automation, and non-technical ones, such as team roles and project management. The present study investigates a course setup to introduce these concepts to software engineering undergraduates. We designed the course by employing coding to associate DevOps concepts to Agile, Lean, and Open source practices and tools. We present the main aspects of this projectoriented DevOps course, with 240 students enrolled it since its first offering in 2016. We conducted an empirical study, with both a quantitative and qualitative analysis, to evaluate this projectoriented course setup. We collected the data from the projects repository and students' perceptions from a questionnaire. We mined 148 repositories (corresponding to 72 projects) and obtained 86 valid responses to the questionnaire. We also mapped the concepts which are more challenging to students learn from experience. The results evidence that first-hand experience facilitates the comprehension of DevOps concepts and enriches classes discussions. we present a set of lessons learned, which may help professors better design and conduct project-oriented courses to cover DevOps concepts.In d e x Terms-DevOps, education, Open source, OSS, FOSS, Empirical software engineering, Agile software development, Emerging domains of software, Tools and environments.

Learning DevOps with an Industrial Perspective in the Software Engineering Curricula

“…However, it leads to a more substantial acquisition of generic competencies such as teamwork, increased selfconfidence, and better preparation for professional work. RBT has been shown to result in higher academic performance compared to traditional strategies [7], and working on OSS projects enhances students' resumes with technical experience, real-world connections, and networking opportunities with practitioners, alums, and OSS contributors [6].…”

“…Practitioners, alums, and potential clients monitor/mentor the teams throughout the SPDC. Each team implements a continuous deployment pipeline, going through the entire SPDC and encountering real-world DevOps challenges [6]. Teachers and assistants guide technical decisions, assess project risks, and establish the project rhythm.…”

“…The proposed course, which is the practical sessions, is offered in the 4th semester (second year) of the Software Engineering program at the Software Engineering Course at the University of Brasília (Brazil). Since 2014 more than 350 students have enrolled in this course, producing more than 47.000 commits, 5.000 pull requests, and 6.000 issues [6]. The project-oriented OSS teaching framework has been refined to support teams of students in efficiently completing projects with external stakeholders/practitioners.…”

“…In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of undergraduate courses focused on DevOps [5], [6], [7], as noted in the last (draft) version of the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK 1 ). To cover the technical and non-technical aspects of DevOps effectively, many of these courses adopt active learning strategies [8] that aim to narrow the gap between software engineering education and industry demands [9].…”

“…We contribute to the field of Software Engineering (SE) research by presenting a strategy for teaching DevOps based on real-world experiences from software-intensive companies adopting DevOps through Research-based Teaching (RBT) [7] combined with project-based learning (PBL) by using Open Source Software (OSS) projects [6] and implementing DevOps practices. This strategy is suitable for undergraduate education, regardless of the course syllabus.…”