Software Project Management Course Research Articles

Exploration of Teaching Mode of Software Project Management Based on Engineering Education Professional Certification

Software Project Management is a core professional course in software engineering major. Combined with engineering education professional certification, we deeply analyze some problems existing in the reform of software project management course teaching mode, and further put forward the teaching improvement strategies. A new teaching model of software project management course is explored based on the analysis of achievement of course teaching objectives, the establishment of all-channel teaching system, and the refinement of assessment and evaluation granularity. The further deepening of the teaching reform of this course can promote the achievement of the training goals of software engineering professionals, and at the same time guarantee the implementation effect of engineering education professional certification.

Using Blended Project-Based Learning to Teach Project Management to Software Engineering Students

Project-based learning (PBL) approaches are common in software engineering (SE) and project management education. However, the blended learning modality is still little explored in this context. The application of PBL in blended learning environments is called blended project-based learning (BPBL). In order to fill in this research gap, this study analyzed the implementation of an undergraduate SE project management course carried out in a Brazilian private university using the BPBL method. In order to evaluate the outcomes of the adoption of this method, a questionnaire was administered to students who were also invited to identify some lessons learned, assessed using content analysis. In terms of student performance and satisfaction, the results of this survey showed that student opinions are mixed. However, the students considered more “blended-ready” are said to be very satisfied with the experience and looking forward to another one. The outcomes of this study can be used to better prepare teachers and students to adopt BPBL in software project management courses.

Enhancing the Student Perception on Software Project Management in Computer Science

Contribution: This article presents a research for enhancing the computer science students' perception on the software project management subject. The main objective of this article is double. The first one is to redesign the current course by including new teaching and new learning methods that encourage students to learn the project management competences and skills. The second one is to analyze the satisfaction of the students regarding the new software project management course. The design of the new course has been based on the improvement proposals from the students, which were collected throughout a grounded theory (GT) study during two academic years. Background: Students must be motivated with both the technical and other transversal competencies provided by the different subjects in the computer science curricula. It is not easy to teach a management subject because students do not clearly find the relationship with their studies. However, it is widely accepted that computer science students need to be trained in project management to be able to work at full capacity in the industry. There is not much literature on how to increase the motivation of students in management subjects. Research Question: Which are the causes and consequences of a low level of interest for software project management in computer science studies? Methodology: Two different experiments were carried out. The first one consisted of determining, during two academic years, the main reasons why computer science students do not get to comprehend the need for such this subject in the curricula. From the GT results, a set of innovative actions were introduced in order to redesign the subject. In the second experiment, during the following two academic years, the satisfaction of the students regarding the changes introduced in the course was analyzed. Findings: The first finding was obtained from the GT study conducted. Four causes influencing students to do not give enough importance to software project management, two consequences derived from these causes and three contingencies to potentially mitigate the consequences were identified. The second finding was the corroboration that the new course design contributes to student motivation and engagement. Through the evaluation of the new course, students can better understand project management techniques and their application to projects. Data collected show that students are aware of the importance of these skills and competencies for their background and professional profile.

The MOSAICS Model of Educational Approaches for Teaching the Practice of Software Project Management

Maybe you heard the line “managing programmers is like herding cats”, and if you consider there is some truth behind this, then you should, perhaps, think how it is to teach people to perform this job. As we know from the research literature, there is no such thing as a consensus about the most suitable teaching method of a software project management course targeted to information technology students. Moreover, the majority of publications focus on the theoretical aspects of the course, thus leaving little details about the application of the theory, or how to experience the practical side. The paper at hand proposes an abstract model of educational approaches, suggestively named MOSAICS, which may be used in teaching the practical side of a software project management course.

Enhancing Student's Learning and Satisfaction Through the Use of Social Media

Communication in and out the classroom is an essential component for education. As the technology emerges, there is a need to adopt to the new technologies to enhance students’ learning experience. Social media technologies provide informal communication methods that promote student engagement and satisfaction by removing communication barriers. In this paper, we report our experience in using different social media technologies to enhance students’ learning experience and satisfaction with the course. We perform our experiment in software project management course and conduct a survey to assess the students’ perspective towards using these different social media technologies in enhancing their learning and satisfaction. Results show that students are satisfied and feel that their learning experience has improved when using social media for class communication.

ENHANCING STUDENTS' LEARNING AND SATISFACTION THROUGH THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Communication in and out the classroom is an essential component for education. As the technology emerges, there is a need to adopt to the new technologies to enhance students’ learning experience. Social media technologies provide informal communication methods that promote student engagement and satisfaction by removing communication barriers. In this paper, we report our experience in using different social media technologies to enhance students’ learning experience and satisfaction with the course. We perform our experiment in software project management course and conduct a survey to assess the students’ perspective towards using these different social media technologies in enhancing their learning and satisfaction. Results show that students are satisfied and feel that their learning experience has improved when using social media for class communication.

CDIO-Based Teaching Reform for Software Project Management Course

CDIO-Based Teaching Reform for Software Project Management Course

Effects of Using Requirements Catalogs on Effectiveness and Productivity of Requirements Specification in a Software Project Management Course

This paper presents the results of two educational experiments carried out to determine whether the process of specifying requirements (catalog-based reuse as opposed to conventional specification) has an impact on effectiveness and productivity in co-located and distributed software development environments. The participants in the experiments were 76 students enrolled in three courses on project management for software development at the University of Murcia, Spain, and the Mohammed V University of Rabat, Morocco. The results of a fixed effects meta-analysis (Hedges’ g) obtained a medium effect ( $-$ 0.495, $p=0.034$ ) for productivity, and a large effect ( $-$ 1.077, $p ) for effectiveness, in favor of using a catalog-based reuse process rather than a conventional specification process. The other co-factor examined, distribution (either global or co-located), had no statistically significant interaction with the process used (catalog-based reuse or conventional specification) for either effectiveness or productivity. Further research is required to study the effectiveness and productivity of the catalog-based requirements engineering learning method so that it can be taught in software engineering courses and applied in real software engineering projects.

Software Project Management as Team Building Intervention

The courses of software project management (SPM) and Software engineering (SE) are regularly taught at undergraduate degree program in computer science. Students of these programs also have to undertake projects as part of various courses during their degree program. The purpose of this research is to assess whether the software engineering or the software project management course had enhanced the cohesion among team members while undertaking a six month or a year-long project. The teaching of these two courses is considered as a team building intervention in this research. A total of 167 students returned a modified version of Group Environment Questionnaire distributed to 200 students. Off these, 81 were those who had taken the SE course and subsequently did a project before they had taken SPM course. The rest of the students (85) consisted of those who had taken SPM and had undertaken final project. The results of this paper indicates that the SPM as compared to SE as a team building intervention had a better effect on team cohesion. The paper has successfully identified a single course that can enhance the performance of students as a team in contrast to proposing all the courses taught at the undergraduate computer science degree program as intervention for better team building and team work as proposed by Hogan & Thomas, 2005.

Informatics Related Branch's Curriculum and Role of Project Management

The most important goal of the software industry is to produce successful product. During the process of production several times the product fails due to lack of proper management. This paper is exploring the role of software engineering courses in computer engineering related branches and then reasons why software developers lack project management in proper software management trainings. Our findings reflect that in majority of computer related branches like computer science, computer engineering, information system engineering there is no place for software project management course. Our findings are based on a survey of course curriculums of computer engineering, computer science and information system engineering courses taught in Turkish universities.

A survey of industrial experiences with CMM and the teaching of CMM practices

Teaching Software Engineering at the undergraduate and graduate levels often lacks the emphasis on models and practices that support software process improvement, such as Capability Maturity Model ...

Activity Driven Teaching Model for Software Project Management Course

Activity Driven Teaching Model for Software Project Management Course

Why Is Software Project Management Difficult? And What That Implies for Teaching Software Project Management

The discipline of project management has been available for almost 40 years. This paper examines several factors that make the management of software development projects more difficult than the management of many other kinds of projects. These factors negatively impact the software project managers' success in estimation and scheduling, planning, responding to schedule and budget pressures, monitoring project status and managing the integration, and testing phases of the project. Techniques for addressing each of these difficulties are described, and topics that need to be incorporated into software project management courses to address these issues are outlined.

A software project management course role-play-team-project approach emphasizing written and oral communication skills

A software project management course role-play-team-project approach emphasizing written and oral communication skills