Enhancing Software Project Management Courses With Industry Participation

It is difficult to convince students that proper software engineering methodology is useful until they face a large project with serious deadlines based on legacy code. Without a realistic experience, students often do not understand why software engineering processes exist or are valuable. Without legacy code, the frustrations of software maintenance and upgrades are never truly imparted to students. By teaching students via a real software company experience with multi-semester projects managed by experienced students, teaching software engineering can become a rewarding experience for students with significant improvement in their future employability. The project management students gain significant insight into project management as well as a greater appreciation of software engineering when it is their project that they have to run. We describe how to teach very real lessons about software engineering, teamwork, and the realization that their code and client relationships will have be inherited by another class. KeywordsCooperative; Co-op; Industry; Project; Education;