“Software is the easy part of Software Engineering” - Lessons and Experiences from A Large-Scale, Multi-Team Capstone Course
Capstone courses in undergraduate software engineering are a critical final milestone for students. These courses allow students to create a software solution and demonstrate the knowledge they accumulated in their degrees. However, a typical capstone project team is small containing no more than 5 students and function independently from other teams. To better reflect real-world software development and meet industry demands, we introduce in this paper our novel capstone course. Each student was assigned to a large-scale, multi-team (i.e., company) of up to 20 students to collaboratively build software. Students placed in a company gained first-hand experiences with respect to multi-team coordination, integration, communication, agile, and teamwork to build a microservices based project. Furthermore, each company was required to implement plug-and-play so that their services would be compatible with another company, thereby sharing common APIs. Through developing the product in autonomous sub-teams, the students enhanced not only their technical abilities, but also their soft skills such as communication and coordination. More importantly, experiencing the challenges that arose from the multi-team project trained students to realize the pitfalls and advantages of organizational culture. Among many lessons learned from this course experience, students learned the critical importance of building team trust. We provide detailed information about our course structure, lessons learned, and propose recommendations for other universities and programs. Our work concerns educators interested in launching similar capstone projects so that students in other institutions can reap the benefits of large-scale, multi-team development.
Fri 19 MayDisplayed time zone: Hobart change
13:45 - 15:15 | SE educationSEET - Software Engineering Education and Training at Meeting Room 109 Chair(s): Alexander Serebrenik Eindhoven University of Technology | ||
13:45 15mTalk | Persona-based Assessment of Software Engineering Student Research Projects: An Experience Report SEET - Software Engineering Education and Training Chetan Arora Monash University, Laura Tubino Deakin University, Andrew Cain School of Information Technology, Deakin University, Kevin Lee Deakin University, Vasudha Malhotra Deakin University | ||
14:00 15mTalk | Exposing Software Engineering Students to Stressful Projects: Does Diversity Matter? SEET - Software Engineering Education and Training Isabella Graßl University of Passau, Gordon Fraser University of Passau, Stefan Trieflinger Reutlingen University, Marco Kuhrmann Reutlingen University Pre-print | ||
14:15 15mTalk | “Software is the easy part of Software Engineering” - Lessons and Experiences from A Large-Scale, Multi-Team Capstone Course SEET - Software Engineering Education and Training Ze Shi (Zane) Li University of Victoria, Canada, Nowshin Nawar Arony University of Victoria, Kezia Devathasan University of Victoria, Daniela Damian University of Victoria Pre-print | ||
14:30 15mTalk | Attribution-based Personas in Virtual Software Engineering Education SEET - Software Engineering Education and Training Klaudia Madhi School of Computation, Information and Technology, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany, Lara Marie Reimer School of Computation, Information and Technology, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany; Institute for Digital Medicine, University Hospital Bonn, Bonn, Germany, Stephan M. Jonas Institute for Digital Medicine, University Hospital Bonn, Bonn, Germany | ||
14:45 15mTalk | Leveraging Diversity in Software Engineering Education through Community Engaged Learning and a Supportive Network SEET - Software Engineering Education and Training Nowshin Nawar Arony University of Victoria, Kezia Devathasan University of Victoria, Ze Shi (Zane) Li University of Victoria, Canada, Daniela Damian University of Victoria Pre-print |