Work in progress — Software residency: A contribution for professional maturity

Preparing and qualifying the Computer Science students to meet the software industry needs is a growing challenge for academia. This task is about maturing the future professional with good practices of software development, increasingly demanded by software industry. This work aims to present the process of implementing a software residency program for undergraduate Computer Science course, which we call “Software Residency Program”, and is being implemented since the beginning of the academic year 2010. This program provides an environment for undergraduate students to experience real software development, following standards and rules established by the software industry. We describe the methodology adopted to implement the process and some initial results we have collected from the students who are in the program. Currently, the Software Residency Program has entered its final phase, and is scheduled to be completed in the month of May 2011, finishing the process of Software Residency, when results will be evaluated by all the stakeholders.