Page - 187 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

Developing Software Qualityand Testing Capabilities inHispanic America:... 187 6.1 CurriculumDesign andDevelopment Experiences in Costa Rica ProfessorsfromtheCostaRica InstituteofTechnology(TEC,TecnológicodeCosta Rica)andtheUniversityofCostaRica(UCR,UniversidaddeCostaRica)developed extension training courses (continuing education) and consultancies on software qualityassurance,softwareprocessesandmethodologyandsoftware testingaround 1995. Course contents and consultancies were mostly based on IEEE’s Software Engineeringstandards.By1997,Prof.MarceloJenkinsdevelopedsoftwaremetrics and software processes courses MSc in computing. Open and in-house training coursesonsoftwarequalityassurancewereofferedbyTECin1999and2000. 6.1.1 Cenfotec In year 2000, Cenfotec was founded as a technical college by a group of software development entrepreneurs and academics interested in contributing to Costa Rica’s knowledge-based economic development. Cenfotec started offering a 2- year programme on software development, grounded on Software Engineering. The first three terms of the original programme included a software engineering project, three technical courses and one English for IT course (nine computing science and software engineering courses, three English courses, three software engineering projects). A fourth term comprised a practicum (internship) and two technical electivecourses.The three integrativesoftware engineeringprojectswere the curriculum backbone; each exercised requirements elicitation, analysis and specification,softwaredesign,constructionandtesting,withdifferenttechnological mixes and processes. The projects were incremental, progressively integrating knowledge and skills required for problem-solving using systematic engineering processes, employing an approach that helped grow intertwined ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ skills requiredfor teamworkandfutureprofessionalendeavours.Experience-driven learn-by-doing collaboratively computing products or services was implemented within projects by teams of students that performed roles inspired by Watts Humphrey’s Team Software Process [30] and the Rational Unified Process [31]. Actual teamworkwasachieved:4 to6 teammemberscollaborate,performingroles for which they are accountable, employing emotional and social intelligences as cornerstones [32], and developing good work habits [33]. Benchmarking against theSWEBOK v0.95, revealed theneed to improvesoftware testingeducation. In July 2003, Cenfotec agreed with Universidad Latina (Costa Rica’s largest private university) to develop there Costa Rica’s first Software Engineering degree programme, as a continuation of Cenfotec’s 2-year programme. The knowledge content was validated against a draft of the Software Engineering Education Knowledge (SEEK), that was published by a year later by the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineers’s Computer Society [34]. That Software Engineering degree had improvedcoverage