Abstract
The success of a software project depends on many factors. It requires project team members to be well-equipped with technical knowledge and good soft skills. Among the many soft skills, the two basic soft skills that all project team members should possess are communication and negotiation skills. Today, communication skills are found to be lacking among the university graduates. This situation has resulted in the unemployment of 3 942 information technology graduates in 2006. A study was initiated to incorporate the teaching of communication and negotiation skills in the Project Management (PM) course through team projects undertaken by members of multi-racial composition. This paper presents feedback from 67 students on the teaching of communication and negotiation skills, and project management concepts through team projects.
Highlights
The successful development of software systems is often the result of software project team efforts
The outcomes of the survey reveal aspects related to the opinions and results of the students on the teaching of the Project Management course through team project
Team project helps the majority of students to understand and be able to apply project management concepts in software development
Summary
The successful development of software systems is often the result of software project team efforts. The attributes of a competent project manager include good technical software development knowledge, ability to communicate effectively and negotiate with customers and project team members to resolve project management issues and problems. In the computer science (CS) programme offered by the University of Malaya, students who specialise in software engineering (SE) are required to undertake the course Project Management (PM) as one of the core departmental courses in the second year. The PM theories and concepts are taught through lectures, followed by tutorial questions to enhance students’ understanding This lecture-tutorial based teaching method does not help to build up or enhance the communication and negotiation skills among the students. The following sections explain the formation of project teams and the research methodologies used to conduct the study
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