Guiding students learning project team management from their own practice

Project development is scheduled in the final year study of undergraduate students in computer science, software engineering, information technology, and other relevant programs. This final project provides students an opportunity to integrate all the skills and knowledge learnt from their previous studies into real practice. Experience in supervising student projects shows that student’s ability in working collaboratively in a teamwork environment is the most influential factor on the quality of a student project. However, managing a student project team is significantly different from managing a real project in a workplace. This paper reports the practice of guiding students handling internal collaboration in a team environment during IT project development. Firstly, a practical guideline in dealing with human incompatibility in a project team is introduced to students in the beginning of their project development. During the course, when an event occurs, except in some extreme circumstances, the supervisor only gives students advice on all the possible solutions and their corresponding consequences according to the nature of the event. It is the students in the project team who make the final decision on which action they should take on resolving the problem encountered. This gives students more responsibility in managing their own project team, from which students will learn much more in handling human-related issues effectively than from textbooks. The case studies presented in this paper show that this approach is useful.