Do We Teach the Right Thing? A Comparison of GSE Education and Practice

Abstract

Global Software Engineering (GSE) is a reality for even the smallest companies, so software engineering students need to learn how to work in a globally distributed development context. Many approaches to teaching GSE have been described in the literature. Since the majority of software development is done by engineers working in small or medium sized enterprises (SMEs) we now ask: Are today's students being trained to work effectively in small distributed companies? We surveyed three GSE SMEs to identify which of 70 Global Teaming Model (GTM) practices were problematic and important to this sample. We then mapped recommendations for GSE educators to those pinpointed GTM practices. Finally, we analysed the level to which these needed GTM practices were addressed by the GSE-Education (GSE-Ed) literature, and who performed these practices. Nine GTM practices were found important and relevant to all three SMEs. Seven of these were addressed by GSE-Ed recommendations, and two were seen to be lacking. A rich set of 63 unique GSE-Ed recommendations were found to support the seven GTM practices, but our analysis unearthed a surprising complexity of roles and responsibilities undertaken by the instructor in GSE-Ed courses. As a result student and client involvement in coordination and collaboration activities tended to be weakened or non-existent. In order to ensure graduates are prepared for the reality, practitioners of SMEs need to take on a more active role in the education process. Also, students need to be given more responsibility so they can learn the broader professional and management skills required when developing software in multi-site SME teams.

Phronesis, Authentic Learning and the Solution of Open-Ended Problems in Computer Science

“…This is, in essence, an application of phronesis, involving as it does, the integration of medium and long-term goal-seeking strategies and evaluative reasoning about priorities. In this context, it is worth reviewing the conclusions of Beecham et al [66] who address the question of whether the learning activities undertaken by software engineering students correlate with actual practice in a global software development team, especially within a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME). They report that global software engineering education, while providing technical content, still falls short of providing students with the skills in project management, interpersonal and leadership skills necessary to manage the collaboration processes which are part of the discipline, and this is accentuated in the context of an SME where there is greater fluidity in employee roles and responsibilities.…”

Searching for Global Employability

“…Conforming to the challenges reported in the review [Clear et al 2015], potential gaps in GSE-Ed were noted by Beecham et al [2017b]: One was the lack of attention to non-technical aspects such as project management, and interpersonal and leadership skills, and relatedly to student responsibility of projects and their operations. Another gap was the lack of student work in regulated application domains.…”

“…The groups decide on all aspects of their projects, including not only technical questions but also the project topic and means of management. GSE-Ed scholars have recently raised the need to increase student responsibility regarding the implementations of GSE-Ed courses [Beecham et al 2017b]. This call was grounded in observations that much of the educational attention readily goes into technical performance instead of generic aspects concerning self-reliance, project management, and interpersonal skills.…”

Industry Trends in Software Engineering Education: A Systematic Mapping Study

“…Globalization of SE, involving global software engineering (GSE) or global software development (GSD), is one of the most recent trends encountered in the literature. Beecham et al reported an eminent need to address this teaching strategy in recent publications [43,44]. Others suggested how Agile through Scrum methodology can adopt to GSE/GSD [45].…”