Integrating process improvement practices into an undergraduate software engineering course

Most software development organizations are attempting to improve their practices in response to increasing competitive pressures to shorten development cycle time and increase quality. Their success is dependent upon the effectiveness of their software process improvement methodology. Software development teams must understand and be committed to this methodology for improvements to occur. This paper describes the introduction of software process improvement practices in an undergraduate software engineering course. The course requires students to work in teams of 5-6 persons to develop a software application in a one-semester time frame following a systematic development process. Software process improvement practices are integrated throughout the course in terms of both lecture material and team exercises. Teams are continuously challenged to examine their development practices for areas of improvement. This activity is facilitated through the use of previous class post mortem reports, a mid-stream process improvement exercise and the writing of their own post-mortem report upon completing their project. The results of applying these software process improvement practices are described along with examples of process improvements from the student teams.