Industry-Emulated Projects in the Classroom

Since the "2008 Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Information Technology" report was published, it has been acknowledged that capstone courses play an important role in the Information Technology curriculum. As we move into the future, we need to reconsider what should go into a capstone course. The Curriculum Guidelines report discussed multicultural in terms of disciplines, but among employers today, multicultural often means multinational. Further, beginning with the Standish Group's CHAOS report and continuing with the introduction of Agile project development, industry has wrestled with dynamic software development environments. Balancing the need to deliver projects on time, on budget, and on spec with changing requirements and resources can be an overwhelming task for project managers and IT professionals. This paper describes a new type of capstone course that attempts to expose students to the realities of project development in the 21st century and equip the students to deal with them.