A client-focused, team-of-teams approach to software development projects

This paper describes an innovative and very successful final year project course that has been provided in the Department of Computer Science over the past four years. Students are formed into relatively large teams of 16 and tackle a challenging, realistic project during a single semester. Unlike many computer science project courses that emphasise the technical issues, to the detriment of the end-user, this course is focused on the people involved in the project and the client. The project team is highly structured and team members take on all of the roles that one is likely to encounter in projects in the workplace.