Teaching “Software Project Management” course - Seven years experience

Teaching “Software Project Management” Course – Seven Years Experience

Mirjana Ivanovic, Zoran Putnik, Zoran Budimac Department of Mathematics and Informatics, Faculty of Science, University of Novi Sad,

Novi Sad, Serbia e-mail: {mira, putnik, zjb}@dmi.uns.ac.rs

Klaus Bothe Institute of Informatics, Humboldt University Berlin

Berlin, Germany [email protected]

Abstract— A course on “Software Project Management” created as a part of DAAD project was conducted for the seventh time at the Department of Mathematics and Informatics in Novi Sad during the school-year 2010/11. At the beginning, it has been a part of the “Business Informatics” curriculum, as an elective course for the students of the final semester of studies. After realizing its importance, the course was moved, and became an obligatory subject of the first year of master studies of "Software Engineering" direction. It has been realized completely in accordance with Bologna declaration and continual assessment. Course includes practical work on a real world project, and class hours devoted to discussions and role-playing games considering the situations of programmer’s real life. Using funds of another project, Austrian WUS association program, respectable literature on a subject was purchased, and an appropriate textbook was written. In this paper, we will present our long-lasting experiences with the development and teaching of this course, and also results of a survey covering students' opinions about the course.

Keywords- international educational project; joint courses; software project management

I. INTRODUCTION

During the year 2000, an international educational project entitled "Software Engineering: Computer Science Education and Research Cooperation" has been started [9]. Starting with four participating universities, from four countries, over the years, the project gathered participants from nine countries and fifteen universities. The main purpose of the project is dealing with the development of joint educational courses and course and assessment materials. Project lasts for eleven years now under the sponsorship of “Stability Pact of South-Eastern Europe”, and financial support of DAAD (“Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Diens” or "German Academic Exchange Program"), and is currently considered for further continuation. The first course that was developed, the one that started the project, was a course on “Software Engineering” [2], [3]. As the project grew, it dealt with the development of several other courses, for example “Object-oriented programming”, “Software Project Management”, “Advanced

Compiler Construction”, and “Data Structures and Algorithms”, being the most developed and used, while several other courses are still "under construction". The most important thing to mention is that all of those courses are more or less under joint construction by several institutions, project members.

Being satisfied with the results, good experiences and successful cooperation, project members continued and enlarged their cooperation within the TEMPUS project [4], [11]. General idea of this project was establishment and accreditation of a set of courses forming master studies in the field of "Software Engineering". The idea was to include two countries beneficiaries of the project, which are Republic of Serbia, and FYR Macedonia. Besides them, participants from Germany, United Kingdom, and Spain, together with individual experts from Bulgaria and Romania, joined their forces to create the curriculum with about 25 courses, forming master studies in the field of "Software Engineering". The mission was successful, and after accreditation at the European Software Engineering Institute, master studies have been conducting in Serbia and FYR of Macedonia, since the year 2006. While TEMPUS project lasted, it included a significant amount of students and lecturers mobilities. Currently these mobilities are financially supported by DAAD project and institutional local funds.

While it was originally created as a bachelor course, after several years of delivering, "Software Project Management" course [6] at this level, the importance and interest for it has been broadly recognized. Because of that, the course has been moved to the master level, as one of the obligatory courses, and since then the number of course participants doubled, and our experiences expanded.

Some of the most important and interesting experiences gathered over the years have been reported in this paper. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 shortly presents the contents, structure, and organization of the “Software Project Management” course and all of its basic components. In Section 3, the assessment and grading elements are explained, particularly those generally rarely used methods. Section 4 presents some other courses and approaches dealing with the same area, comparing those with our course, while section 5 brings some starting attempts for further enhancement of the course. Finally, in the 6th Section, reactions and opinions of our students are presented, together with some broader

Authors are partially supported by Ministry of Education and Science ofthe Republic of Serbia, through project no. OI174023: "Intelligent techniquesand their integration into wide-spectrum decision support" and by DAAD,through project "Software Engineering: Computer Science Education andResearch Cooperation"".

978-1-4673-1456-5/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE Page 973

conclusions and further development paths that are considered by the authors and users of the course.

II. STRUCTURE OF THE COURSE

Since no course dealing with the area of project management existed at any of the universities participating in the DAAD project [9], it was created from scratch during the year 2004. After the preliminary agreements and cooperation with other project members, it was created mainly by the research and educational team from the Department of Mathematics and Informatics, Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Serbia. Since then, its features were presented to the other project members at regular annual meetings, together with the statistics and student experiences. Based on the discussions and suggestions and through some of cooperation and joint work, it has been further developed and enriched, again mostly by the project participants from Novi Sad.

From the start, the course has been created so that it can be conducted in accordance with the Bologna declaration. Topics covered within the course were produced in a form of PowerPoint presentations, but besides that, the course also has a clearly defined structure considering the practical work, and assessment methodology. For example, it was agreed that the final grade for the student depends equally on three written tests conducted during the school-year, supporting continual assessment, and a practical project, performed as a homework assignment using a MS Project tool, as a prerequisite for the final exam. For those students who are unable to attend lectures – which happens more often since the course was moved to master studies, where a lot of students are part-time employed – it is possible to take all of the tests at the same time, during the examination session. Still, even for those employed students, a prerequisite of a practical project exists in order to approach the exam.

Topics that are presented during the theoretical classes of the course are:

1. Introduction to Software Project Management;

2. Project Management body of knowledge;

3. Capability Maturity Model;

4. Planning;

5. Cost Estimation;

6. COCOMO Tool;

7. Introduction to Ethical Aspects of Informatics;

8. Conflict Management;

9. Attitudes Theories;

10. Moderation, and

11. Communication Techniques.

The first written test covers the first three topics; the second test covers topics from four to six, while the third test covers the rest of the topics. Since the course is presented to the students of master studies, it was even decided to put additional

requirements for students. Not only that the student is required to achieve more than 50% of all of the points for a positive grade, but also each student has to attain at least 40% for each of the tests. This way, we tried to ensure that all of the topics are understood and learned at least to some minimal level.

Exercises for the course have different forms, and change during the school-year. They start as almost purely theoretical, dealing with the planning theory needed for a practical project. After that, they switch to almost pure practice, with lectures and exercises about the usage of MS Project software tool, needed for solving the practical exercises/project. Finally, exercises connected to the topic of computer ethics, are somewhere in the middle on the theoretical/practical range. They involve students into live discussions and role-playing games about mostly ethical, but also some quite expert and professional questions and problems from the life of software engineers and software project managers.

III. ASSESSMENT AND THE GRADING METHODOLOGY

As already mentioned our assessment methodology consists of three theoretical tests, practical project, and combination of live discussions and role-playing games.

Tests have a usual form and include: single/multiple choice questions and open questions enhanced only by the fact that we require minimal knowledge for each area assessed, to be at the level of 40% of points gained. So far, this condition didn't prove to be too demanding for our students.

Practical project is an individual homework project, which has to be performed as a prerequisite for the exam. After presenting theoretical lecture on principles of planning, and one semi-practical lecture on usage of MS Project tool, students are introduced to a real life problem – organization of a scientific conference. An appropriate lecture is presented, which includes presentation of numerous aspects and experiences in organization of a scientific events, where students were able to inquire about all of their dilemmas. Students are also given two documents which include detailed explanations of necessary requirements and activities for successful organization, to help them solve the problem. One of them is an informal "story", explaining in common words how the conference is organized, and what are the problems and difficulties organizers encounter. The second one is a strict and formal use case diagram, created in a form our students have already been introduced to within the course on "Software Engineering", where each of the functions and requirements are carefully and fully explained.

After this, students have "indefinite" time to solve the assignment and submit their view on the organization of a conference with a project created using MS Project tool. All of the schematics, deadlines, and schedules have to be carefully planned, and all of the costs determined. Being students' first encounter with the organizational problems, we are more than satisfied with the results they are achieving.

While tests and project assignments are something our students met earlier, very often within other courses, technique of role-playing games is not used that frequently at our Department. Still, our experience within this course is very

978-1-4673-1456-5/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE Page 974

positive, especially considering the satisfaction students stated with this technique.

We found or developed, and selected about ten stories from imaginary life of software engineer and software project manager. They presented possible situations and problems they might encounter in their future professional life, and we wanted to face them with various opinions about those situations. Stories we present to them, include:

Example of misusage of keystroke monitoring software by the direction of the company, in order to decide who of the employees will be fired. Students are divided into roles of employees, heads of the company, programmers creating keystroke monitoring software, lawyers engaged by the employees, and syndicate leaders, and involved into live discussion. Later on, discussion continues through the forum of the learning management system we use at the Department and lasts for two weeks, creating very exciting and inspired discussions. These discussions were not awarded points that would influence the final grades, but we are considering this possibility also;

Story considering the security of computerized patient record at a local hospital. Students are faced with the possible problems and dilemmas in the case they are hired to create a software system using these records, while being aware that the login systems suggested by the hospital has a rather weak security protection, giving a chance for access to protected data to unwanted persons. Lively discussion and suggestions for possible acts by the programmer were very interesting;

Story about the software controlled system for large truck breaks, steering and transmission system. While it was stated that the vehicle was overloaded by the company, it is also noted that the software system did not have a part controlling this overload. As the consequence, breaks didn't work when the truck reached downhill road, and caused an accident when truck hit the storage at the bottom of the hill. Responsibility of the programmer was agreed upon by the most of the students, yet there were some strong opinions against, supported by well constructed defense;

Story about the usage of digital wallets, and the lack of protection of the network access to those. In a story, problem was by accident discovered by a software developer practicing his network programming skills, who recognizes that it is possible to access "digital wallet" and withdraw some money from it, even though this digital wallet is produced by a highly recommended and praised software company. Blow the whistle, or talk to the software company? Go to newspapers, or try to convince the company to change their software security module? Again, live discussion and exchange of opinions are basic way of conducting classes;

Story dealing with the obligatory implantation of nano-chip into a person's body, keeping all of the medical data, but unfortunately also some additional data. The problem arises when our students are proposed a luxurious job offer of creating a software system that will trace the movement of an employee within the company building, for security reasons. As a problem, they are also asked to enhance their software with some additional controlling features, and give a company access to some private data;

The last story raised the largest discussion about the responsibilities and duties of programmers, and software developers in general. Namely, it presents situation in which rocket missile is software controlled, but using an outdated, twenty years old software, intended to control 20 times slower missiles. Rounding of real numbers has a consequence that the calculation was wrong by some microseconds, which at larger distances and faster missiles, and after 20 hours work and error compiling, produced error large enough to have tragic consequences. The story is spiced up with the details of software being written by an unknown person, in assembly language, with no comments nor manuals, and no one being responsible for its maintenance. While hoping that this is just a story, students had a strong wish to express their views and beliefs about the subject, which resulted in a fruitful discussion.

While these discussions and role-playing games were just a part of the course, introduced to create some kind of exercises for a topic of computer ethics, they raised a lot of interest with students. In a questionnaire about the course, these discussion classes got the highest grades, so we're trying to find a way to introduce something similar for some other topics also.

IV. RELATED WORK

There exist in literature different ideas about the topics that should be covered within the "Software Project management" courses.

For example, as explained in [7], at Vienna University of Technology a course on "Software Engineering and Project Management" is conducted, yet with a different emphasis. The course objective is to "measure and enhance competencies required for software projects", through teamwork, self-assessment, peer-group assessment, and assessment by supervisor. The course is a part of the curriculum for computer science and information systems, and focuses on 6 practical projects, conducted by teams of 6 students, working in pre-defined roles within the project management. Roles that each student has to try to cover are: project management, programming, testing, documenting, UI design, and system architecture. As authors claim [7] "… each student has to carry out each type of activity in the project by being responsible for one area where s/he has to coordinate this activity in the whole group…" While the authors are satisfied that they are able to "control the competence development" within the course, they are also aware that "projects are difficult to plan, and it is complicated to react on occurring problems."

978-1-4673-1456-5/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE Page 975

Another example we can find in [15], where a successful collaboration between University of Memphis and the local "Project Management Institute" has been established within a course on "Software Project Management". As authors say, "…the result is a popular and highly successful program in which project management professionals from the PMI are engaged in student learning by providing a guest lecture series, serving as mentors for class projects, providing actual organizational projects for students to analyze and apply class concepts, and serving as judges on student team project competitions." As a result, students gained not only thorough and accurate education, but also the first-hand experience from industry and practical skills concerning this important field of computer science.

Recognizing the importance of knowledge in the area of "Software Project Management", at the University of New Brunswick’s Renaissance College, this education has been included as a part of the course "Leadership in Theory and Practice" [13]. Within the course, students are "…exposed to two particular project management related outcomes – initiate and plan a leadership project; execute, control, and close a leadership project…" and this becomes the core of the course and the students’ assessment. The knowledge that students gained within the course is tested and assessed by students' having to submit two assignments: a project plan and a project report. In addition, students are exposed to and discuss various leadership approaches.

V. COMPARISON WITH THE SIMILAR COURSES

In addition, let us discuss and compare some other courses that deal with "Software Project Management".

The significance and implications of the knowledge in the field of software project management for software engineers is recognized all over the world. Courses on the subject can be found at all major universities, and we will mention only a few, comparing them in some points with our course.

At the Columbia University [4], a course on "Principles of Software Project Management" is offered. As claimed, it "… provides an overview of the roles, responsibilities, and management methods of the technology project manager", with the purpose to "…teach students how to develop approaches and styles of management for software projects."

Similar to our course, this one also offers several theoretical tests for students, and a practical project to be solved. In addition, within this course, some homework assignments and points for classes’ attendance are awarded. These last two concepts were considered for our course also, but were omitted on purpose. The reasons for this decision were:

Points for attendance invited to lectures also non-interested students, who would not pay attention, came simply for the points, and who would even read newspapers (!) at classes. So, we decided to creatively exercise the notion of "active attendance", which resulted in much better and much more constructive and fruitful atmosphere at the classes. Namely, attendance points were awarded just to students who actively contribute to lectures, answer questions, give

suggestions and propositions, or participate in discussions and role-playing games;

Experience with the homework assignments has been also rather disappointing for us at similar courses. Solutions were very often copied or cheated from previous year's students, downloaded from the Internet, or solved by the same person for several students. In addition, because of the complexity of the assignments in this area, they usually require some involvement of teamwork [1]. This in turn, creates an opportunity for some team members not to participate in solving the assignment, putting additional burden on the rest of the team. Unfortunately, sense for "justice" with our students is still developed in wrong direction, so covering for their non-working friends is considered good, while "whistle blowing" of those cheating is considered bad habit. Consequently, we decided to drop this type of assignments from our course.

At "John Hopkins University" [10], a course "Software Project Management" is offered as a course that "…describes the key aspects of a software project", and "…introduces software engineers aspiring to become software project managers to the responsibilities of this role." This course covers some general topics of the field – same as our course does – such are: project management body of knowledge, cost estimation, planning, or notions about orientation of new employees and evaluation of their performance. In addition, lecturers decided to cover some notions from general software engineering field, such as: process models, operation and maintenance of software, or the basic questions of software metrics.

With our course, we were able to skip these last mentioned notions, because of the existence of high quality "Software Engineering" course we already mentioned, that was delivered to the students before the “Software Project Management” course. This in turn gave us more time to concentrate on equally important, yet narrower notions in the field of project management.

Considering the assessment within this course [10], students’ practical projects have been evaluated, and discussions, have been performed, same as we did within our course. Also several home assignments and team project are requested from students, which we did not use for earlier explained reasons;

At Australian "New South Wales University" [18], a software project management course is given with the aim to "…provide a student with a comprehensive introduction into project management in an information technology / information systems context." We noted an interesting fact that this university introduced, same as we apply in our course, the notion of "minimum acceptable level" of 40% for each assessment point. As a part of the grade, two individual and one group assignments are required, accompanied by the final exam;

While these examples are important and show some similarities, but also discrepancies with our approach, we would like to point out the existence of even larger university

978-1-4673-1456-5/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE Page 976

School‐year

Number of 

students

Passing 

percentage

Average 

grade

2004/05 14 100% 8.14

2005/06 13 100% 8.75

2006/07 14 100% 8.21

2007/08 32 81% 8.04

2008/09 28 78% 7.86

2009/10 43 97% 7.85

2010/11 30 70% (so far) 7.88

involvements with software project management. Namely, at the University of Aberdeen [17] there exists a Master of Science program in "Software Project Management", consisting of ten courses and an individual dissertation, each one assessed by the combination of coursework and written examination.

There is also a lot of other material about the field available on the Internet. At [12], for example, a more general list of master studies in the field of general "project management" can be found, each one supported with the use of software. At [7], a list of schools and colleges providing software project management programs, approved by "International Project Management Commission" is given. People completing programs from the list are able to apply for master program in software project management for certification at IPMC. Finally, at [15] it is possible to find lists of organizations and associations in the field, list of schools offering education in project management in USA and in Europe, websites dedicated to the area, and finally the list of software project management tools and vendors.

Since our course uses MS Project as a tool for home assignment in creating a project, we were interested to see if other schools and universities have any experience with this, or some other software tool. It turns out that MS Project is one of the more often used tools, and it is recommended for example at the following universities:

Columbia University [4], within already mentioned course "Principles of Software Project Management";

At York University, School of Business [21], since MS Project is used for the "Software Project Management" course, a workshop is organized to teach it;

At Waterloo University, a course on MS Project is organized that conforms to the internationally recognized standards of the Project Management Institute, and that can be used with the application for the "Project Management" certificate and the "Advanced Project Management" certificate,

Finally, at New York University, School of Continuing and Professional Studies [13], for a certificate in "Management and Information Technology", an especially dedicated course on MS Project is offered.

Such a situation confirmed our belief that we picked one of better tools available for the area of project management, and not just the simplest solution because of the existence of cooperation of our university and Microsoft, giving us the ability to use MS Project free of charge.

VI. THE COURSE ENHANCEMENT

Over the years, percentage of passing for this course was always very high, compared with the other courses at studies of Informatics. The basic data about the course can be seen in the table 1. Let us note here that the minimal passing grade is 6 (six), while the maximal grade is 10 (ten).

In our opinion, reasons for such results are twofold:

In the beginning, while the course was at the bachelor level, it was an elective course. As a consequence, it was elected only by students who were really interested in the field, so good results were no surprise;

Last several years, since the course became obligatory, it has been moved to the master level. Again, it is no wonder that master students have high percentage of passing the exam, since the tuition fee for master studies is relatively high compared to local salaries, so our master students are additionally motivated.

While it can be noted that average grade is slightly dropping over the years, mentioned fact that the course is now obligatory, and much higher number of students enrolled, are the natural explanation for that. Compared to other courses at our Department, particularly at our Chair, we can notice that grades are even slightly higher. For example, for a course on "Software Engineering", average grade during the last 6 years, ranges between 7,6 and 8,1. For the new master course on "Methodics of Informatics", average grade is around 7,25, while for the course "Requirements Engineering", average grade is 8 for the last year. All in all, we witnessed the fact at our Department that the students are more eager to finish their studies, than to search for the high grades.

Still, after several years of course conduction, a need arose for its further enrichment and improvement. After successful application, under the auspices of WUS Austria [20] and "Course Development Program+ (CDP+)" program, sufficient funding was secured for these purposes.

First of all, a set of recent, up-to-date, and highly regarded literature was provided for the use by students. In addition, a textbook for the course has been written, and distributed to students free of charge. Still, over time, topics and presentations were enhanced and further developed, same as is the set of real-life situations used for exercises. This in turn required some additional changes and further enhancements of the textbook. Second edition of the book is currently in preparation, since it is needed very much, especially for employed master students. The book will be enhanced with recent research results in the field and methodologies that proved themselves as a standard in a meantime. Some help

TABLE 1: GRADES AND PASSING PERCENTAGE

978-1-4673-1456-5/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE Page 977

Low 

boundary

High 

boundary Meaning

Attendance 73% 84%

Contents:

Amount of knowledge 3,08 3,20 5 ‐ too much/1 ‐ to little

Contents 3,00 3,17 5 ‐ too much/1 ‐ to little

Course well structured 2,92 3,20 5 ‐ very well/1 ‐ not at all

Style of the lectures:

Lecturer familiar 3,73 4,10 5 ‐ very well/1 ‐ not so much

Lectures well prepared 3,17 4,10 5 ‐ very well/1 ‐ not so much

Lecturer engaged 3,45 4,10 5 ‐ very well/1 ‐ not so much

Willingness to answer 

students' questions 4,50 4,92 5 ‐ very well/1 ‐ not so much

Presentation 3,17 3,50 5 ‐ too fast/1 ‐ too slow

Using media

Amount of info on 

slides adequate 3,57 4,50 5 ‐ very well/1 ‐ not so much

Slides well structured 

and clearly organized 3,50 3,90 5 ‐ very well/1 ‐ not so much

Benefit of the course:

New things learned 3,50 4,00 5 ‐ much/1 ‐ not so much

Contents useful 3,58 3,70 5 ‐ completely/1 ‐ not so much

Overall rank of the 

lecture 3,78 4,10 5 ‐ very well/1 ‐ bad

with the development of a book, we received also from our students. Some of them applied and as a part of their studies, did some review of teaching materials we gave them. Those reviews will hopefully be a good starting point in our work on a textbook, they will be extended and improved, and some of that material will be included in a book.

New topics that could be hopefully covered in a course and appropriate textbook are for example: risk management, quality assurance, notions in connection with outsourcing, human resource management, soft skills mainly in the area of communication with the customer and writing reports and documents, and so on. On the other hand, we consider possibilities to introduce teamwork at practical exercises, with a particular emphasis on developing leadership and problem solving skills with students.

VII. FEEDBACK

Each year, the DAAD project [9] participants meet at annual workshops and report on their work over the year. For those purposes, we always conduct a survey at the end of the course, inquiring about the satisfaction of our students with (among other things) the "Software Project Management" course. Also, authorization and justification of a WUS project, required inquires and the report about the students' satisfaction with the course itself, and the developed teaching material.

Numerical results of these surveys would require a lot of space, so we will present here only the boundaries we received over the years in Table 2. Still, here we can mention one point we consider very important. During the time when the course was not obligatory for all directions, the number of students that were obliged to take the course was relatively small, sometimes even bellow ten students. Still, the number of students actually appearing at lectures, and listening and participating in the assignment solving, was much higher! We encountered the situation when the number of students attending the course was tripled with students who would not earn any ECTS points for passing it. Our survey showed that they participated simply because they learned from previous generations of students, that attending the course and learning the material was very valuable and worth for their future practical work and employment.

There were of course some textual comments and suggestions for improvement of the course. Here we will enumerate the most interesting ones, and those that were repeated over the years:

"Looking into the slides in English is useful, yet difficult! A lot of pauses exist because of the needed translation."

"Not too much pre-knowledge needed, but good knowledge of English and some notions from the "Software Engineering" course are useful."

"Introductory presentations have a little bit too much text, so the important things are not emphasized enough, and the lecture becomes monotonous. Later presentations are OK."

"The course was good and useful, but some more practical lessons would be very useful."

"More practical examples needed."

"It would be interesting to let students present some of the lectures, from their own experience."

"Generally, very, very good!", and

"Everything was OK, it's just that we have to learn now!"

Generally, we may be satisfied with the grades received for the "amount of knowledge" and "contents" of the slides, grades for the lecturers' knowledge, preparation, engagement, and willingness to answer questions, or the estimation of "how much new things" students gained.

As an addition, we mention here that the numerical general grade about the "quality of the course" was usually somewhere just above the grade 4 on the average, on a scale from 1 to 5 (except for the first year when the course was conducted). This we consider rather good and realistic.

Of course, some problems are also noted and declared by the surveyed students. With our grades presented in the table, we particularly don't like the estimation considering the "structuring" of the course, "organization" of the slides, and opinion about the usefulness of the course. Yet, we have noticed that as the students are older and more mature (coming from various years of study, both master and graduate), grades for each of these characteristics, as well as the overall grade of

TABLE 2: BOUNDARIES OF FEEDBACK FROM STUDENTS

978-1-4673-1456-5/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE Page 978

the course are growing. Since there is a certain number of students participating in this course that came back to their studies from their working positions, we have at classes relatively out of the ordinary situation, with the age and maturity level of students. While age ranges from 20 to above 30 years, their experience ranges even more – from 3rd year student, to a student being employed for up to 10 years!

VIII. CONCLUSIONS

After seven years of course conduction, we can summarize some facts, and come to certain conclusions. The biggest problem we realized during the time the course was conducted for undergraduate students. At the time, we noticed the fact that some students already see themselves as ‘pure programmers’, not being too motivated to be involved in the course dealing with "project management". Actually, it showed that they were not interested to participate in almost anything else, besides implementation part of the software development cycle. Namely, by their opinion, the course itself (same as all of the other non-implementation activities) is too theoretical, and not needed in practice.

While we were sure that this is due to bad habits and pretty bad state of software practices in Serbian industry, we were not able to convince all of our students into this fact. Yet, as we progressed from undergraduate, to master studies, situation changed significantly. Actual situation with master students is that around 75% of them are already employed. Even though they mostly work in outsourcing, and are probably less able to notice the whole picture of a software system they are part of, changes in their opinion are evident. Their willingness to participate in a course and to present questions and inquiries from their workplace is apparent and obvious. Similarly, their satisfaction with the course grew, and we expect higher fulfillment and approval about the course in the future.

As with any other course we conduct, teaching resources are improved and renovated each year and for each new course conduction. What relaxes the situation with this course is the fact that it is the part of a large international project, so it's always under the careful monitoring of a larger teaching community. Possibility for other project participants to use created material will hopefully enable its' improvement even more, using the combined experiences of students from different countries. Feedback, grades, number of students, and satisfaction the majority of students expressed, gave us the right to be satisfied with the course so far. While there is always a room for further improvement, we are pleased with the current situation, and expect that students will be able in the future to value those "non-programming" skills even more.

As a concluding wish, we hope to reach the stage when our students will come to the conclusion stated in [13] by one of their students, saying ‘‘I have realized that the events that were successfully completed are the ones I planned and scheduled long before the actual dates they took place...” thus recognizing the importance of good software project management.

REFERENCES

[1] M. Bielikova, P. Navrat: "Experiences with Designing a Team Project Module for Teaching Teamwork to Students", Journal of Computing and Information Technology, vol 13, Nr 1, pp.1 – 10, 2004.

[2] Budimac, Z., Ivanovic, M., Putnik, Z., and Bothe, K.: "Studies in Wonderland - Sharing of Courses, Lectures, Tasks, Assignments, Tests and Pleasure", Proc. of the 22nd EAEEIE Annual Conference, Maribor, Slovenia, pp. 213-219, http://eaeeie2011.uni-mb.si/, 2011.

[3] Budimac, Z., Putnik, Z., Ivanovic, M., Bothe, K.: “A View on a Successful International Educational Project in Software Engineering", Proc. of IFIP TC2 Central and Eastern European Conference on Software Engineering Techniques 2011, Debrecen, Hungary, pp. 91-106, http://cee-set.njszt.hu

[4] Bothe, K., Budimac, Z., Cortazar, R., Ivanović, M., Zedan, H.: "Development of a Modern Curriculum in Software Engineering at Master Level across Countries", Computer Science and Information Systems, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1-21. (2009)

[5] Columbia University, Course "Principles of Software Project management", http://www.projectreference.com, accessed on 29.10.2011.

[6] Department of Mathematics and Informatics, Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Course "Software Project Management" home page, http://perun.pmf.uns.ac.rs/moodle/, accessed on 11.11.2011.

[7] Dorn, J., Pichlmair, M., Schimper, K., Tellioglu, H.: "Supporting Competence Management in Software Projects", In Proceedings of International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising, pp.451-458, 2008.

[8] International Project Management Commision, list of degree programs, http://www.certifiedprojectmanager.org/approvedtraining.html, accessed on 29.10.2011.

[9] "Joint Course on Software Engineering" Project home-page, http://www2.informatik.hu-berlin.de/swt/ intkoop/jcse/, accessed on 11.11.2011.

[10] John Hopkins University, Software Project Management course homepage, http://apps.ep.jhu.edu/course-homepages/, accessed on 29.10.2011.

[11] Joint MSc Curriculum in Software Engineering, project, Tempus grant no. CD-JEP-18035-2003., http://perun.pmf.uns.ac.rs/msc-se/, accessed on 11.11.2011.

[12] Masters in "Project Management" collection of home-pages, http://mastersinprojectmanagement.com/, accessed on 30.10.2011.

[13] Mengel, T.: "Outcome-based Project Management Education for Emerging Leaders – A Case Study of Teaching and Learning Project Management", International Journal of Project Management, 26, pp.275-285, 2008.

[14] New York University, School of Continuing and Professional Studies, homepage at http://www.scps.nyu.edu/areas-of-study/information-technology/professional-certificates/business-project-management.html, accessed on 30.10.2011.

[15] Poston, R.: "Teaching Project Management Skills: An Example of Collaboration between a University and the Local PMI Chapter", AMCIS 2010 Proc. Paper 170. http://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2010/170

[16] ProjectMinds, list of resources in (software) project management, homepage at http://www.projectminds.com/usefulwebsite.html, accessed on 30.10.2011.

[17] University of Aberdeen, Software Project management master studies homepage, http://www.abdn.ac.uk/prospectus/pgrad/study/, accessed on 30.10.2011.

[18] University of New South Wales, Software Project Management course homepage, http://www.handbook.unsw.edu.au/undergraduate/courses/, accessed on 30.10.2011.

[19] Waterloo University, homepage of Centre for Extended Learning and Professional Development, http://mastersinprojectmanagement.com/, accessed on 29.10.2011.

[20] WUS Austria projects homepage, http:// www.wus-austria.org

[21] York University, School of Business, "Using MS Project" workshop, http://seec.schulich.yorku.ca/enrollment/programs/alpha_listing/, accessed on 30.10.2011.

978-1-4673-1456-5/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE Page 979