An innovative approach to Software Engineering term projects, coordinating student efforts between multiple teams over multiple semesters

Software Engineering projects typically go through stages of development, with implementation near the end. Following the normal order in a school semester leaves students with little time to develop code and little to show for their efforts besides long written reports. Students also work in a bubble, having little contact with anyone outside their immediate group. This paper describes an innovative approach in which students work on two half-projects in parallel during a semester, implementing a design developed by previous students while simultaneously developing a new design to be implemented by a following group. This approach not only starts implementation early, it also forces the students to coordinate their efforts with two different groups of students, whom they may or may not ever meet in person. That experience has not always been enjoyable, but it has demonstrated the value of quality documentation far more effectively than any lecture ever could. An added benefit is that they experience two different approaches to software engineering, and work on problems in two different domains. This novel approach to a team-based semester project is easily applied to any field in which a term project is employed, with little adjustment needed for particular subject areas.