`Peopleware' integration in an evolving software engineering curriculum

This paper describes our experience with Software Engineering education at the University of Namur (Belgium). Emphasis is put on the evolution of SE education from one technical 30-hrs module to a group of several modules representing a central part of our curriculum. In particular, Software Engineering project-course was extended in order to integrate aspects which are not usually considered as part of software engineering classical teaching. Aspects like team management, communication skill, leadership, meetings management,... are learned more naturally by-doing than by classroom teaching. The purpose of our experience is take profit of the rich experience students have to live anyway in the project-oriented course. In fact, the size of the project, its extend over the whole life-cycle, and the requirement to achieve it by teams make it an ideal place to make students sensitized to such aspects. Our believe is that the software development process of any sizable project should be to the human nature of participants should not be ignored (nor overestimated). The experience is practiced for two years. At the beginning, students were troubled because they used to focus on techniques and to ignore completely human aspects. But finally, at the end of year, the experience has been judged positively by them. Subsequently, they showed better understanding of human aspects related to their jobs. The paper develops this enlarged view of SE education and, in particular, it describes the integration of `people-side' topics within technical material.