What leading practitioners say should be emphasized in students' software engineering projects

Software engineering students should carry out projects requiring them to work in groups, develop requirements documents, and design a system employing object-oriented techniques. To help determine what other project features to require in the limited time of a single semester, we asked software professionals with leadership roles to rank several possible project requirements according to their value for students' professional development. The features were ranked as follows, from most to least important: working with real users; developing a working prototype; completing a running system; and writing a formal verification and validation report. The results show that the area of user and client communication is seen as most crucial.