The role of a project-based capstone course

A project-based capstone course aims at using software development skills while performing a project in the course domain. One of our main challenges is to simulate a real world environment so to provide our students with the experience they need. Planning this experience we should consider academic constraints as well as the students' schedule and skills. In this paper we describe how we implement an agile software development method in a project-based capstone course in the domain of operating systems. We elaborate on how we simulate a real world environment and present a role scheme that is used by the students to manage the process. We suggest a discussion on how to use the role scheme as an assessment tool to measure the development process in general and students' contribution in particular. We expect to extend and refine the comprehension regarding process measurement in students' teams at the academia.