Software process improvement for student projects

Software process concepts were formally applied to a beginning software engineering project course. In this paper sample technical and process job descriptions for students are given, together with our experience in teaching process skills. Technical and process roles are well understood in large software development companies, but they are neither taught nor applied in most software engineering classes. We found that having explicit technical and process roles for each student gives students a model to understand and help manage project complexity. The effect is to improve their learning as well as the quality of the end-products. Teaching and applying quality improvement ideas is a vital part of preparing students for modern software technology.