How the usage of Project Management Tools is taught in Superior Computer Courses: A Panorama of Brazilian Educational Institutions

Abstract

The Project Management of a contemporary software project is impractical without the support of a Project Management tool. Thus, the usage of these tools has to be addressed in superior computer courses. Even existing a wide literature about project management – manly regarding concepts and methods, it is not found many information related to the teaching of the usage of these tools. Aiming to understand how this competency is been taught, this research aims to characterize the teaching of the usage of these tools in superior computer courses in Brazilian educational institutions. Hence, it was carried out a survey to identify: (a) Which project management tools are been taught; (b) how the instructional units are been defined; and (c) how they are evaluated. We have invited 590 teachers of Project Management and Software Engineering disciplines, and obtained 92 responses. The collected data are synthetized, presenting the panorama of Brazilian educational institutions. The results may be useful for teachers in their disciplines and also for researches, pointing out the improvement opportunities for teaching this content more efficiently.