Incorporating team software development and quality assurance in software engineering education

One of the most important things that students can learn in a course in software engineering is how to effectively work in a team to develop software that is too large for a single individual to produce. It is also important that students learn the value of assuring software quality at each step of the development process. This paper describes how to incorporate a UML-based team project into an object oriented software engineering course. The project gives students hands-on experience in software development and quality assurance at each stage of the software lifecycle, including analysis, design, implementation, and integration. The project is divided into separate interacting parts, with each part assigned to a different team member. Students on each team assume alternate roles of software developer and quality assurance inspector/tester at alternate phases of the lifecycle. This paper describes the approach and an example project, including the problem requirements, timetable of deliverables, and sample deliverables.