Cultivating the Ideal Teamwork through Real Software Development Project Experience

Abstract

It is proven by many studies that software project failures are driven by not just from a single reason but multiple factors, combined and somehow closely related to each other. Basically, failure in projects is when the software developed is not delivered within time, within stipulated budget and of poor quality. All these rooted from poor project management and certainly in agreement with findings reported in the literature. Realizing the importance of this aspect in ensuring software project success, this paper presents our efforts in preparing future software practitioners to become readily equipped especially with teamwork essence through gaining real project work experience with the industry. Emphasizing the application of Teamwork Quality (TWQ) constructs, we invited several software houses to be part of our teaching plan and assigned our students in 12 teams from SSE4301 course to the projects initiated by each company. 14 weeks duration of coursework were given to these students to carry out their projects and at week 15 they delivered a presentation of their product in front of the industrial supervisors, lecturers and the rest of the class for assessment. Our premise is ideal teamwork influences the success of a software project. We believe this small effort capable to instill and cultivate ideal teamwork among the students when dealing with real clients and different set of expectations. Apart from that, we hope the implementation of our teaching plan that incorporated the industry involvement directly would be able to transform and elevate the landscape of teaching and learning we have been practicing for all these years.