Experience with a process-driven approach to software engineering education

Abstract

Most undergraduate computing courses have a project component that attempts to convey some of the aspects of a 'real-life' development project but these often concentrate on the final product, rather than the process by which it is achieved. Process topics, such as project planning and scheduling, configuration management, etc., are often relegated to a casual support role, rather than treated as fundamental requirements for a rational software development process. We are making the concepts of software process central to our software engineering teaching and assessment. The paper reports on our experiences in developing three integrated Software Engineering units.