Teaching real-world software engineering through a capstone project course with industrial customers

Abstract

In this paper, we describe how we teach realworld software engineering to students using a project course simulating in-vivo software development projects. The course gives the students an opportunity to try out in practice the skills gained on other computer science and software engineering courses. The students execute projects in teams consisting of seven to ten students, developing software for a real customer. Students spend more than 150 hours each on the project. The main stakeholders of the projects are the project team, customer, and mentor. The mentor represents the course personnel and provides practical guidance for the project team during the project. During the course, the students are supported by mentoring and experience exchange sessions. While laborious, the course is consistently ranked in the top three in the CS curriculum by the students.

Incorporating Software Maintenance in a Senior Capstone Project

“…Students typically design a new piece of software and are responsible for everything from developing requirements to verifying that the software meets those requirements. Vanhanen, Lehtinen, and Lassenius (2012) have shown that capstone projects give students valuable experience by providing work in which they can acquire necessary software engineering skills. Broman, Sandahl, and Abu Baker (2012) stated that these skills can then be applied to jobs in industry.…”

Discussion on Teaching and Practice of Software Engineering Major Curriculum Based on Project Guidance

“…Therefore, it is very important to strengthen the innovation and reform about practice teaching content of software engineering actually. Software engineering has developed for many years and accumulated many software development technology and methods [5]. Combining the requirements for software engineering talents, we consider that the major should emphasize not only the thought and method, but also the process concept and application ability.…”

A Cloud-Based Mobile System to Improve Project Management Skills in Software Engineering Capstone Courses

“…is course encourages the use of agile practices; however, since it always uses real clients, the clients themselves make sure that student teams work toward building the product they want without losing focus. Vanhanen et al [2] describe another capstone course that uses an ad hoc agile-based process with industrial clients. e interesting feature of this study is the presence of a mentor, who assists and provides orientation during the entire semester.…”

“…e intent of the course is to provide a capstone experience that integrates the knowledge gained from all the previous courses in the curriculum by working on a project with realistic challenges. e blended approach between practical and theoretical components in the teaching of software engineering can bring relevant results because it encourages the development of products closer to production quality [2,3].…”