The work-reflection-learning cycle - Department of Computer and ...

the SE professional community, but the team members generally have no formal
membership in the project customer organization.
3. The case: two project courses in Norway
In an interpretive qualitative study we collected data from the spring semester of
2006 in two, fairly similar bachelor level project courses in Norway. The authors are
engaged in teaching and supervision of these project courses. Project Course 1 (P1) is a
project course at NITH, which is a small, private university college delivering study
programs within IT. Project Course 2 (P2) is a course at NTNU, which is a large public
university with a main focus on technical study programs.
Although there are some differences between the courses, they are structurally
similar enough (see Table 1) for us to use empirical data from both of them combined to
analyze the relationship between the stakeholders.
Table 1: Characteristics of the two project courses of our case
Characteristics Project Course 1 (NITH) Project Course 2 (NTNU)
Level
Bachelor, 6 th (final) semester
Number of students 50
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Size of project Approx.5 students, self-formed Approx.5 students, mostly self-formed
groups/duration groups, one semester, 60% of groups, one semester, 50% of semester
semester workload
workload
Form of course Only introductory / occasional lectures. Supervisor from staff. Appointed group
delivery
contact in the customer organization.
Location Work mainly at the customer’s site. Work mainly on the university campus.
Some groups work at customers’ site.
Educational
Mostly common courses, including Some common courses, including basic
background within basic courses in Java and
system analysis and programming.
the study program RUP/UML
Previous project 2 nd year, case ready-made for the 2 nd year, case ready-made for the
course
course, RUP-based, Java/UML, no course, partly XP-based, Java/UML, no
external customer
external customer
Case Real case, external customer, software product to be developed
Imposed structure on Final project report required. Method (e.g. process model) freely chosen by the
part of the school group. Groups required to report regularly on progress/status to supervisor.
Mid-term report required.
Assessment One grade for the whole group. Both product, process and presentation count.
Data for this paper were collected through semi-structured interviews with P1
groups, done as part of an exploratory case study on work and collaboration support in
the projects. One-hour interviews were conducted ca 3 weeks before project delivery
with 7 out of 11 groups. We also made brief (10-20 min) telephone interviews with P1
and P2 customers 2-3 months after project completion, addressing customers’ rationale
for, and outcome from, project participation. 6 out of 14 P1 customers responded, as did
9 out of 9 P2 customers (of 10 projects). We further draw on reflection notes in
students’ project reports. Also, we made extensive use of available written documents:
customers’ evaluation forms, formal course specifications, project reports, etc.
Main viewpoints from the customer interviews were categorized and summarized in a
table. Data on the project teams was analyzed in the following steps. First, the
interviews and the collected written materials were summarized for each group. Then
we used our theoretical lens, described in the previous section, to identify central
attributes of the experiences for each group. Finally, we analyzed the data across
groups, identifying patterns and explanations.
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