Experience with Work-Product Oriented Software Development Projects

In this paper, we describe our experiences with student team projects in objectoriented software development. Object-oriented development processes are not as straightforward as, for example, traditional waterfall-like models. In objectoriented development, there is no clear border between analysis, design, and implementation. Students therefore have difficulties deciding on what to do next, how to do it, and why to do it. A work-product oriented development process provides a framework for structuring and managing object-oriented development. Development can be defined in terms of interrelated work products. Each work product is defined by its purpose and contents, the inputs needed, and the techniques used to produce it. The definition of a development process and the production of a single work product are therefore more straightforward. Our experiences show that such an approach is very suitable for student team projects.