Teaching students software engineering practices for micro-teams

Standard methodologies, which have been developed for large software development teams, and Agile practices, developed for small teams, make up the software engineering practices taught in the Computer Science classroom. However, we have found that there is a significant prevalence of “micro” teams doing business-critical software development in the field. Thus, software development best practices for micro teams must be incorporated into the software curriculum. Towards this end, we created a multiple-case case study (comprising five micro team projects) showing how micro teams handle the software development process. Through each of these projects, we seek to showcase what practices from existing software development methodologies are undertaken by the developers of the projects, to achieve similar ends as developers in larger teams. Specifically, the case study highlights how existing software development methodologies need to be modified, adapted or extended for micro teams. The case study and micro team guidelines were presented to students in a software engineering class within the Computer Science department at a large R1 university. The teaching was assessed using a mix of surveys and structured interviews. Initial evaluations showed promise. Students were positively inclined to accept the lessons, and showed good recall of the concepts taught in tests.