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Time pressure is prevalent in the software industry in which shorter and shorter deadlines and high customer demands lead to increasingly tight deadlines. However, the effects of time pressure have received little attention in software engineering research. We performed a controlled experiment on time pressure with 97 observations from 54 subjects. Using a two-by-two crossover design, our subjects performed requirements review and test case development tasks. We found statistically significant evidence that time pressure increases efficiency in test case development (high effect size Cohen's d=1.279) and in requirements review (medium effect size Cohen's d=0.650). However, we found no statistically significant evidence that time pressure would decrease effectiveness or cause adverse effects on motivation, frustration or perceived performance. We also investigated the role of knowledge but found no evidence of the mediating role of knowledge in time pressure as suggested by prior work, possibly due to our subjects. We conclude that applying moderate time pressure for limited periods could be used to increase efficiency in software engineering tasks that are well structured and straight forward.

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In this paper, we describe how we teach realworld software engineering to students using a project course simulating in-vivo software development projects. The course gives the students an opportunity to try out in practice the skills gained on other computer science and software engineering courses. The students execute projects in teams consisting of seven to ten students, developing software for a real customer. Students spend more than 150 hours each on the project. The main stakeholders of the projects are the project team, customer, and mentor. The mentor represents the course personnel and provides practical guidance for the project team during the project. During the course, the students are supported by mentoring and experience exchange sessions. While laborious, the course is consistently ranked in the top three in the CS curriculum by the students.