Measuring team activities in a process-oriented software engineering course

The paper describes a software process that enables the measurements of team activities in a software engineering project course. Observed measurements are presented for three types of team behaviors: full team, sub team and individual. A software process is needed to guide team activities. The generic software process presented is based on IEEE standards and is derived from observing professionals and downsizing their process. It proposes some guidelines and specifies the content of five basic documents. Student team members are required to follow this process and record the time spent on each activity. Observations from these time logs are presented. Student behaviors are analyzed in terms of the time spent on various team activities and on various process activities. The concluding remarks outline salient features of a team oriented project course. This process is designed for teams of six students and can be studied in a regular, one semester session.