The role of a project-based capstone course

A project-based capstone course aims at using software development skills while performing a project in the course domain. One of our main challenges is to simulate a real world environment so to provide our students with the experience they need. Planning this experience we should consider academic constraints as well as the students´ schedule and skills. In this paper, we describe how we implement an agile software development method in a project-based capstone course in the domain of operating systems. We elaborate on how we simulate a real world environment and present a role scheme that is used by the students to manage the process. We suggest a discussion on how to use the role scheme as an assessment tool to measure the development process in general and students´ contribution in particular. We expect to extend and refine the comprehension regarding process measurement in students´ teams at the academia.