their ability to defend and market their product,
beyond the technical, collaboration, and management
skills acquired during the project.
The exercise is held facing a committee composed
of THUAS and UFV teachers, together with Delta-N
representatives, thus providing the academic and
market views. The defence is public, and all the teams
can watch their contenders. The set-up could be
somewhat intimidating for some students. Therefore,
and to provide a meaningful experience for all of them,
we advise finding a balance between academic rigour
and positive atmosphere so that constructive feedback
flows to all participants. One way we found to achieve
this goal is by running a poll by the end of the event to
find out the application preferred by the audience.
2.3 Project Challenges
In the following sections we would like to comment
on various challenges that are worth considering
when establishing a similar collaboration project.
2.3.1 Course Alignment and Integration
One obvious challenge is to find a partner University
that has a compatible course/programme not only
regarding contents, but also having an academic
calendar which can be aligned with your own courses.
In our case, we were lucky to find THUAS, which
mostly met the aforementioned requirements. We
have a substantial syllabus overlapping that allows us
to consider and establish the collaboration. We both
introduce or develop Software Testing, Software
Evolution, Software Reuse, Configuration
Management and Agile practices to our students in
the same year and semester. For the latter, we both do
so with special attention to the Scrum framework and
managing the product backlog with user stories.
Taking into account the courses involved, we both
decided that the best way to establish the teams was
to have UFV students playing the product owner (PO)
role and THUAS students playing the Scrum Master
(SM) and Development Team (DT) roles, though we
had to make minor adaptations to adapt to the reality
and circumstances of the participants (see 2.2.4).
2.3.2 Credits Involved and Expectations
On THUAS side, they run this project integrating
several courses (IT Operations, Global Cooperation
and Process and Project Management) totalling up 15
ECTs. For us the only course involved is Software
Engineering II, accounting for 6 ECTs.
The academic load difference between the Dutch
and Spanish components is not a minor challenge for
a project spanning over ten effective weeks. The
Dutch students have a projected capacity of 25 man-
hour per week, while the Spanish would have 10 man-
hour per week.
This fact presents some challenges, but, if properly
exploited, they can enrich the team experience. The
problem might arise from the larger group, with a
higher dedication, expecting that their remote
colleagues should be as available as their local ones.
As we mentioned, the academic load is quite different
for the two groups, which turns out in Spanish students
not being as available as Dutch ones. In practice, this
meant that that the SM and DT need to adapt to the
PO’s schedule. On the other hand, POs need to be very
efficient in their interactions with the team if they do
not want to impact the Scrum team performance. Both
situations reflect quite well the environment the
students will find when they start working in a real
company, as these situations are commonplace.
The situation is also good for the students to flesh
out some of the theoretical notions they learn in their
courses. For instance, you have to perform with the
resources you are given, both in terms
of people and
time. Moreover, they see Tuckman's model for team-
development ideas in practice and funny concepts as
storming, norming, etc., acquire, all of a sudden, a
real meaning.
The project certainly demands an extra effort
from the participants, but the feedback got from them
is that the experience is certainly worth the pain.
2.3.3 Collaboration and Coaching Sessions
In our opinion, the main challenge here is to
accommodate schedules and to dimension capacity.
In our case, courses were held in the morning for
Dutch students and in the afternoon/evening for the
Spanish ones.
Once the project is running, for the most part,
collaboration among teachers can effectively be
carried out asynchronously, using tools such as Slack.
The main point is to be attentive to issues that may
pop up at each site and share it quickly so that the
corrective actions can be timely applied. Once the
teachers get familiar with the tools, you rarely need to
organise videoconferencing sessions, though you can
still run them if you deem it appropriate.
Collaboration tools allow you to decouple the
individual's schedules, which is not a minor point to
neglect, as it is not easy to find time slots when
everybody is available. Besides, all the teachers get a
record of the significant events in the project, which the
different parties can include in reports as they see fit.
Capacity, to give adequate support, should be
another concern, which largely depends on the