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research-article

Collaborating with industrial customers in a capstone project course: the customers' perspective

Authors:

Maria Paasivaara,

Casper LasseniusAuthors Info & Claims

ICSE-SEET '19: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training

Pages 12 - 22

https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE-SEET.2019.00010

Published: 27 May 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Using capstone projects to teach software development in practice has become increasingly popular. To make the projects as realistic as possible, collaboration with industrial customers is preferable. However, we are lacking information on how this collaboration should take place in practice. Especially the customer's point of view on the collaboration is missing. In this paper we first report how we have arranged the collaboration with the industrial customers in our yearly capstone project of around 120 students forming 7--9 person Scrum teams.

Second, we performed 13 semi-structured interviews with the customer companies from the last instance of the course to collected their perspective. The main reasons for companies to participate in the course were: recruiting, getting the software developed and researching new technologies. A good project topic, according to our customer companies, has a clear vision, is suitably important for the customer company, is realistic with enough challenge, is motivating and illustrates the work at the company.

Customers emphasized the importance of spending enough time with the teams and actively collaborating and communicating with them especially in the beginning, as the students might be too shy to ask enough questions. Typically, a customer representative used a few hours per week for the project and mostly collaborated with the team on the customer's premises.

Overall, the companies were happy with the results: most accomplished their recruiting goals and all projects finished with a functioning product.

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Cited By

Nasir NMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)Towards Better Design and Delivery of SE Team Project CoursesProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 210.1145/3649405.3659471(828-829)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649405.3659471
Kirk DLuxton-Reilly ATempero E(2022)Risks in Student ProjectsProceedings of the 24th Australasian Computing Education Conference10.1145/3511861.3511877(143-152)Online publication date: 14-Feb-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3511861.3511877
Bütt EPerson SBohn CPéraire CSerebrenik A(2022)Student-sponsored projects in a capstone courseProceedings of the ACM/IEEE 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3510456.3514160(254-264)Online publication date: 21-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3510456.3514160
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Information & Contributors

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ICSE-SEET '19: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training

May 2019

234 pages

Conference Chairs:
Sarah Beecham
Lero - the Irish Software Research Centre, Univ of Limerick
,
Daniela Damian
University of Victoria

Sponsors

SIGSOFT: ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering
IEEE-CS: Computer Society

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IEEE Press

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Published: 27 May 2019

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ICSE '19

Sponsor:

SIGSOFT
IEEE-CS

ICSE '19: 41st International Conference on Software Engineering

May 27, 2019

Quebec, Montreal, Canada

Upcoming Conference

ICSE 2025

2025 IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering

April 26 - May 3, 2025

Ottawa , ON , Canada

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Cited By

Nasir NMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)Towards Better Design and Delivery of SE Team Project CoursesProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 210.1145/3649405.3659471(828-829)Online publication date: 8-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649405.3659471
Kirk DLuxton-Reilly ATempero E(2022)Risks in Student ProjectsProceedings of the 24th Australasian Computing Education Conference10.1145/3511861.3511877(143-152)Online publication date: 14-Feb-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3511861.3511877
Bütt EPerson SBohn CPéraire CSerebrenik A(2022)Student-sponsored projects in a capstone courseProceedings of the ACM/IEEE 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3510456.3514160(254-264)Online publication date: 21-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3510456.3514160
Paasivaara MErdogmus HMoreno A(2021)Teaching the Scrum master role using professional Agile coaches and communities of practiceProceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Software Engineering: Joint Track on Software Engineering Education and Training10.1109/ICSE-SEET52601.2021.00012(30-39)Online publication date: 25-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICSE-SEET52601.2021.00012
Barbosa AG. Neto GLencastre MFagundes RSantos W(2020)Fostering Industry-Academia Collaboration in Software Engineering using Action Research: A Case StudyProceedings of the XIX Brazilian Symposium on Software Quality10.1145/3439961.3440005(1-9)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3439961.3440005
Tubino LCain ASchneider JThiruvady DFernando NRothermel GBae D(2020)Authentic individual assessment for team-based software engineering projectsProceedings of the ACM/IEEE 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3377814.3381702(71-81)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3377814.3381702

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