Students need to be holistic in their approach to software development. Software development looks ‘obvious’ to students in software engineering courses. You gather the requirements,… Read More »Software development involves more than the code of the application
The ball point game has many uses in your classroom. I was at #p4a24 last weekend. I am a co-organiser, and also a participant. Play4Agile… Read More »Use the ball point game in teaching
We overestimate our ability to multitask at our peril. You can walk and talk with a friend. You might knit and watch TV. Both knitting… Read More »Teach students that multitasking is evil
Bottlenecks are more common than people realise, and aren’t always attached to bottles. I realised later that the previous post about theory of constraints, forgot… Read More »Mind the bottleneck: Why students should recognise one
A little theory of constraints goes a long way in building lovable products. The people student teams are building a product for can’t provide feedback… Read More »Teach students theory of constraints concepts to improve their product development
Focus on making a lovable product, not ‘minimum’ component. I always get nervous when students say they’re focusing on building the ‘minimum viable product’ (MVP).… Read More »Promote simple, lovable, complete to your students
We help our software engineering students by helping them learn to collaborate effectively. A lot of what we teach computing science students is domain knowledge,… Read More »Learning to collaborate is learning to be employable
Coordination could be passive participation, while collaboration is active participation. Compare two teams of students. Team A coordinates the work between members, while Team B… Read More »Collaboration is more than coordination
The app they’re building together is less important than learning how to work collaboratively in a team. My students on the year-long software engineering course… Read More »Teach your students to focus on the team journey
Always be getting ideas out of your head and into a tool Think back to the first computer you had. Now remember what it was… Read More »Teach your students to lighten their cognitive load