Moving from Waterfall to Agile Process in Software Engineering Capstone Projects

摘要

Universities offer software engineering capstone course to simulate a real world-workingenvironment in which students can work in a team for a fixed period to deliver a qualityproduct. The objective of the paper is to report on our experience in moving from Waterfallprocess to Agile process in conducting the software engineering capstone project. We presentthe capstone course designs for both Waterfall driven and Agile driven methodologies thathighlight the structure, deliverables and assessment plans.To evaluate the improvement, weconducted a survey for two different sections taught by two different instructors to evaluatestudents’ experience in moving from traditional Waterfall model to Agile like process. Twentyeightstudents filled the survey. The survey consisted of eight multiple-choice questions and anopen-ended question to collect feedback from students. The survey results show that studentswere able to attain hands one experience, which simulate a real world-working environment.The results also show that the Agile approach helped students to have overall better design andavoid mistakes they have made in the initial design completed in of the first phase of thecapstone project. In addition, they were able to decide on their team capabilities, training needsand thus learn the required technologies earlier which is reflected on the final product quality.