Software development practices to enhance software quality and help teams better develop collaboratively have received attention by the academic community.Among these techniques is Behavior-Driven Development (BDD), a development approach which proposes software to be developed focusing primarily on its expected behavior.Teaching-wise, introducing BDD on software engineering classes and/or training courses for software developers has become important.In this context, this study presents a body of knowledge on the impacts of teaching BDD in active learning environments (ALE).To achieve this, we have triangulated data from four data sources: (i) a systematic literature review; (ii) an expert panel with active-learning experts, (iii) a survey with participants in a software development course which teaches through active learning, and (iv) a case study on the effects of teaching and using BDD in an ALE.This study results are (i) the-state-of-the-art literature on this topic, (ii) an assessment of benefits and challenges of BDD in ALEs, and (iii) a set of best practices when teaching BDD in ALEs.We concluded that BDD has more positive than negative outcomes and we present a body of knowledge regarding BDD in ALEs.

The goal of this ongoing study is to understand how the development of soft skills is approached in the existing computer science and software engineering curricula.Based on the findings and improvement opportunities, we propose a high-level course structure to be used as a framework for those higher education organizations who want to support the development of students technical and non-technical skills.With this proposal, we believe computer science and software engineering students would be better prepared for the most recent IT market requirements, fostering the development of the 21st century's main competencies.In order to develop the course structure presented in this study, we conducted a literature research, which showed the development of students' soft skills still requires improvement and more efficient approaches.Our solution proposal combines DevOps, Scrum and Challenge Based Learning approaches into one single course, which uses Agile DevOps culture and values, along with continuous feedback, to promote students' soft skills development.

Training students on mobile application development inherits the challenges of teaching software engineering where the target computer is a device that has a large number of features accessible by software.Furthermore, the most related experience in teaching students reveals difficulties in developing software engineering competencies.In this paper we present results from an iOS course held in a smart learning environment that adopted the Challenge Based Learning framework as the teaching methodology.Our results indicate that combining an active methodology along with an engaging environment can foster and improve software development learning.

Evaluate team's performance on long-duration projects can be a challenge.It relies on human expertise to perform estimations, which can generate uncertainty and dependency of experienced specialists.Statistical techniques, such as modeling and simulations, are suitable options as tools to support projects estimations.Our goal in this paper is a formal mapping of the main Waterfall model characteristics to stochastic model to predict performance indices of teams such as the real working time.

Measuring productivity in globally distributed projects is crucial to improve team performance. These measures often display information on whether a given project is moving forward or starts to demonstrate undesired behaviors. In this paper we are interested in showing how analytical models could deliver insights for the behavior of specific distributed software collaboration projects. We present a model for distributed projects using stochastic automata networks (SAN) formalism to estimate, for instance, the required level of coordination for specific project configurations. We focus our attention on the level of interaction among project participants and its close relation with team’s productivity. The models are parameterized for different scenarios and solved using numerical methods to obtain exact solutions. We vary the team’s expertise and support levels to measure the impact on the overall project performance. As results, we present our derived productivity index for all scenarios and we state implications found in order to analyze popular preconceptions in GSD area, confirming some, and refusing others. Finally, we foresee ways to extend the models to represent more intricate behaviors and communication patterns that are usually present in globally distributed software projects.

The market for mobile applications has been growing dramatically, as has the complexity of the applications and the speed of the development process. These changes require a rethinking of the development process and of how developers are trained. In order to better prepare faculty and students for the emerging mobile application market, this study presents a new learning and software development framework that combines Agile methodologies with the Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) framework. CBL provides a student-centered learning framework that mirrors the modern workplace. Agile methodologies address the changing landscape of mobile development environments. A combination of the CBL learning framework and Agile methodologies can better prepare students for the development market. This paper presents an empirical study applying CBL and Scrum in a mobile application development course evaluated through a series of post surveys. The results indicate that a teaching and learning environment based on practical experience combining the CBL framework with the Scrum process is an eective model to promptly teach undergraduates how to be successful mobile application developers.

Project management is an important aspect of global software development. Companies and institutions can obtain benefits by the use of performance evaluation of teams working indifferent sites. The objective of this work is to discuss a stochastic model definition to performance evaluation of Follow-The-Sun (FTS) projects.