Abstract
Software engineering group projects aim to provide a nurturing environment for
learning about teamwork in software engineering. Since social and teamwork
issues have been consistently identified as serious problems in such projects, we
aim to better understand the breakdown between the expectations teams have
at the start of a group project and their experiences at the end of the project.
In this paper, we investigate how 35 teams of undergraduate students approach
software engineering group project courses, and how their previous experience
with collaborative software development matches their expectations for group
work. We then analyse the retrospective documents delivered by the same teams
at the end of a 27-week software engineering group project course, mirroring the expectations at the start of the project with the realities described by the end
of it.
learning about teamwork in software engineering. Since social and teamwork
issues have been consistently identified as serious problems in such projects, we
aim to better understand the breakdown between the expectations teams have
at the start of a group project and their experiences at the end of the project.
In this paper, we investigate how 35 teams of undergraduate students approach
software engineering group project courses, and how their previous experience
with collaborative software development matches their expectations for group
work. We then analyse the retrospective documents delivered by the same teams
at the end of a 27-week software engineering group project course, mirroring the expectations at the start of the project with the realities described by the end
of it.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 110393 |
| Journal | Journal of Systems and Software |
| Volume | 157 |
| Early online date | 12 Aug 2019 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Nov 2019 |