The cross-course software engineering project at the NTNU: four years of experience

Many software engineering courses include all-term projects to convey principles relating to large-scale multi-person development. But even such projects will easily be too small and simple, unless a sufficient amount of study time is allocated to them. This time may be hard to find, especially in strictly programmed profession studies where a lot of general theory courses have to be taken. This paper reports on the experiences from a software engineering project where the solution to the above problem has been to have several courses share one project. This had some advantages. First of all, it allows time for a bigger and more complex project with reasonable sacrifices of "own time" in each of the participating courses. Equally important, it is possible to show connections between the courses. In spite of these advantages, there have also been problems with the project, still leaving room for improvement.