Abstract:

Most of the final year projects in Computer Science bachelor or master’s degree follow an agile methodology to develop their work. However, the way to tackle the information provided in the report still follows old and classic approaches, which are far from agile development. In fact, it is quite common, for students who want to give a step further in the way they document their software work, to meet resistance from the evaluation tribunal and even receive negative feedback. Based on years of personal experience tutoring and evaluating final year software projects, a set of technological and documentation practices is suggested so that the way students document their work is more realistic in respect to the way software professionals do. Some of these practices are making work digitally visible, continuous deployment and feedback, centralized repository, and appropriate agile report of work progress. At the same time, evaluators are encouraged to accept or understand these new ways to report software work, in order to avoid students frustration and burnout when they make the effort to embrace modern techniques, but these are not accepted. This kind of management and development has been applied in four projects during 4 years. Compared to traditionally more formal techniques applied in a 10 years space, students present a larger engagement during the project, as well as a higher mean grade is obtained. Conversely, it is more frequent to obtain critics or misunderstandings from the evaluation tribunal.

Keywords:

Software project, final year project.