What leading practitioners say should be emphasized in students´ software engineering projects

Software engineering students should carry out projects requiring them to work in groups, develop requirements documents, and design a system employing object-oriented techniques. To help determine what other project features to require in the limited time of a single semester, we asked software professionals with leadership roles to rank several possible project requirements according to their value for students´ professional development. The features were ranked as follows, from most to least important: working with real users; developing a working prototype; completing a running system; and writing a formal verification and validation report. The results show that the area of user and client communication is seen as most crucial