The Ongoing Development of a Collaboration between a Software Project Management Course and an Introduction to Software Development Course: (Abstract Only)

The ability to manage software development teams is an important skill in the computing professions. The Software Engineering Body of Knowledge devotes a separate knowledge area to this skill. It is difficult, however, to effectively teach software project management (SPM) in a traditional undergraduate setting, because it is logistically challenging to find software development teams that students can manage over a sufficiently long period of time. Thus, students often cannot apply in practice the SPM theory they learn in class and, in particular, the soft-skill aspects of SPM. To enhance student learning and experience of SPM, we have established a collaboration between a senior-level SPM course and a sophomore-level introduction to software development (ISD) course. In this collaboration, SPM students serve as managers of teams of ISD students during a semester-long project. We designed a methodology to evaluate the collaboration in terms of student learning and experience. This methodology is based on student surveys, reflections, meetings with students, and analysis of student artifacts (e.g., meeting minutes). We are in the third year of a longitudinal study in which we evaluate the collaboration after each semester it runs and evolve that collaboration based on the collected evidence. This poster describes the collaboration, the evaluation methodology, the continuous improvement process for evolving the collaboration, lessons learned on the educational benefits of the collaboration, and issues, such as the amount of managers/ authority, nature of managers/ tasks, logistics, and scheduling.