SLPC++: Teaching software engineering project courses in industrial application landscapes — A tutorial

Abstract

Single large project courses (SLPC) with clients from industry have been established as capstone courses in many software engineering curricula. They are considered a good way of teaching industry relevant software engineering practices to students. However they are lacking in two regards. First, the results are often seen as exploratory prototypes by the client and are not intended for productive use. Second, the projects are usually not integrated into the application landscape of the client. Both of these challenges are of great practical importance in real software engineering projects. In this tutorial we cover the key factors for successfully carrying out our teaching approach called SLPC++ to address these issues. First we show how to initiate such a project course with real clients and problems. Then we describe how to carry out the project using a hybrid process model based on a combination of the Unified Process and Scrum. Finally we address the issues instructors face during such courses. Throughout the tutorial we use examples from a series of four project courses carried out in a highly successful collaboration with the Munich Airport.