Software process in the classroom: A comparative study

Software process paradigms are a core unifying concept in software engineering, but they are very difficult to teach. Recent studies that have attempted to bring software process into the classroom have focused mainly on agile methodologies. Few if any studies have compared multiple paradigms. The current research compared the use of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) and eXtreme Programming (XP) paradigms by teams of students developing projects to satisfy the same user requirements. We found that all teams understood their assigned paradigms, but the RUP teams were more successful in applying the methodology. On the other hand, the RUP teams were significantly more likely to claim that they would have preferred to use XP rather than their assigned process.