Establishing the Current Practice in Industry as the Baseline for Educational Infrastructure: Case South-East Finland

The gap between industry needs and the skills of software engineering graduates is a well known problem. A common approach is to leave this problem for industry to resolve since they know best what skills they require of new employees. However, since many companies tend to have a shortage of resources, this may slow down or even hinder hiring of new graduates. Acclimatizing students to the working environment in industry presents a potential solution to ease the situation but it has received limited interest up to date. In the present paper a current practice survey on a regionally bound area is reported to establish a clear picture of the software development infrastructure used in the industry. This approach can be used to alleviate the acclimatization problem of students in two ways. First, the hard data gathered on the tools and technologies can be used to increase the understanding of software engineering practice among software engineering students and the community in general. Second, it demonstrates the role of regional aspects in current practice in industry. Aligning the infrastructure used in software engineering education with the current practice in industry could prove helpful in acclimatizing students to their future working environments and reduce the time and effort required for the development of a student to an industrial software engineer