Teaching software process improvement through a case study

This paper describes the main design choices of a software process improvement course. The course is organised around an industrial case study. In addition it is based on lectures and group exercises. The case study is centred around four research questions: Why is process improvement important [in your company]? Which processes does your company have? Which improvement initiatives does your company implement? Which relationships exist between software improvement and software quality? During the case study, the students come in contact with actors from the local software industry. We experienced problems with with relating quality and process issues, and that the insight was too superficial. We also had problems with student involvement. Finally we propose a new set of questions that are: Briefly describe a software system that is (or has been) important for your company. Which attributes do you use to describe it? Which are the processes around this system? Which are the improvement initiatives around these processes? How general is that specific software system (and respectively its processes and improvement initiatives) in the context of your company? This work is partially supported by the Norwegian project SPIQ Dept. of Computer and Information Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), N-7035 Trondheim, Norway. Phone: +47 73593444, Fax: + 73 594466, Email dingsoyr/letizia/[email protected]