Modeling in Agile Project Courses

Teaching software engineering in an applied setting with projects provided by clients from industry creates a realworld learning experience for students. While clients are domain experts well-aware of the system’s requirements, they often lack technical knowledge required to make decisions regarding the system architecture or the technologies involved in the project. Therefore, it is challenging for students to maintain a common language of understanding. To overcome this obstacle, we suggest a four-perspective modeling approach that allows students to create models as a basis for communicating with clients that don’t have a technical background. The student teams apply these models to clarify requirements as well as to discuss architectural considerations and technological decisions. Each modeling perspective focuses on different aspects of the system to be developed. We teach this approach using a methodology that integrates modeling into agile software engineering project courses.