It can't get more real: using multiple teams to develop multiple software products for multiple customers

The Computer Science Department at the University of Montana consistently provides a realistic commercial software development and/or maintenance experience for both undergraduate and graduate students. Through the undergraduate capstone sequence and the graduate level two semester sequence in software engineering students learn and apply software engineering techniques. However, they face unexpected challenges involving customers, requirements volatility, multiple platform deployment and quality assurance that cannot be experienced any other way. The project faced by students during a recent project involved a variety of real-world problems that made the experience overwhelmingly positive.