Teaching and learning software project management: A hands-on approach

Abstract

Project management is an essential activity across several areas, including Software Engineering. Through good management it is possible to achieve deadlines, budgets goals and mainly delivering a product that meets customer expectations. Project management activity encompasses: measurement and metrics; estimation; risk analysis; schedules; tracking and control. Considering the importance of managing projects, it is necessary that courses related to Information Technology and Computer Science present to students concepts, techniques and methodology necessary to cover all project management activities. Software project management courses aim at preparing students to apply management techniques required to plan, organize, monitor and control software projects. In a nutshell, software project management focuses on process, problem and people. In this paper we proposed an approach to teaching and learning of software project management using practical activities. The intention of this work is to provide the experience of applying theoretical concepts in practical activities. The teaching and learning approach, applied since 2006 in a Computer Science course, is based on teamwork. Each team is divided into groups assuming different roles of software process development. We have set four groups, each one assuming a different role (manager; software quality assurance; analyst and designer; programmer). The team must be conducted across the software process by its manager. We use four projects, each group is in charge of managing a different project. In this paper we present the proposed approach (based on hands on activities for project management); we summarize the lessons learned by applying the approach since 2006; we present a qualitative analysis from data collect along the application.