A Computerized Support Tool for Conducting a Scrum-Based Software Engineering Capstone Course

摘要

A software engineering capstone course is often used for the introduction of agile methods like Scrum. Apart from exposing students to state-of-the-art topics, the capstone course also enables teachers to use modern ways of teaching through practical problem solving and gives researchers opportunities to conduct empirical studies with students as subjects. In order to satisfy the needs of all parties involved, a good computerized support tool is needed. The students need such a tool to manage their projects, the teachers require instruments for maintaining project requirements and monitoring student progress, while the researchers are interested in data for evidence-driven assessment of the development process. In this paper, an example of such a tool that was developed to support a Scrum-based software engineering capstone course is described. The course design, which requires students to develop a quasi-real project, is described first. Following this, a step-by-step description of the course execution is provided and the tool support of each step is illustrated. Finally, the opinions of 57 students obtained through an anonymous survey after using the tool for the first time are analyzed. The students found the tool intuitive and easy to use, providing good visualization of the project progress and making the execution of their projects simpler and more efficient. The tool gives directions on how their collaboration should proceed and prevents them from exploring their projects blindly. By visualizing the development process, it helps all parties involved to know what each team member is doing, thus preventing procrastination and "free-rider" syndrome.