Real-World Software Engineering: A Spiral Approach to a Project-Oriented Course

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

1-1-1994

Description

A one-semester course cannot adequately cover the software development process and still provide meaningful project experience. We have developed and implemented a tightly- coupled two-semester undergraduate course which presents, in a spiral form, theory and practice, product and process. Coordinating the increase in depth of the lectures as topics are revisited repeatedly, with increasingly demanding projects, constitutes our spiral approach. Three projects differ in size, complexity, team structure, artifacts provided and delivered, and development methodologies. The projects are carefully choreographed to provide varied team experiences and allow each student to function in a variety of roles and responsibilities. The project framework provides a series of passes through the software development process, each pass adding to a body of common student experiences to which subsequent passes can refer. By the middle of the first semester students, individually and in teams, have begun accumulating their own “war stories”; some positive, some negative. This personalized knowledge provides a solid base for more advanced concepts and classroom discussion.

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