Topic recommendations for students learning requirements gathering & project management skills.

[u/eddyparkinson]

I would like to know what key skills you consider important for people doing requirements gathering and/or project management.

Background:

I have students learning requirements gathering & project management skills.  What topics would you recommend?

  This is for 1st year students doing a bachelor's degree in IT. 

Resources:

Resource recommendation much appriciated. website, blogs, videos, books.

Current topic ideas :

•   Use case, Use case diagram, User story, Sequence Diagram / Swim Lanes 
•   Activity Based Planning (Joel on software)/ Mom test (book)
•   Team work (Google Aristotle Project) 
•   OKR  (Objectives and Key Results)
•   Work breakdown structure 
•   Baseline (Project Baseline estimates of time, cost)
•   Comparative Estimating (historical benchmarking), 1,2 and 3 point estimates
•   Kanban etc
•   MVP (Design, Evaluation, MPV Validation Techniques)   
•   Prototyping (Paper prototyping, Digital prototyping) 
•   Test-Driven Development 
•   Quality control (Defect density tracking)  
• Change Control/Change Management 
•   User personas

[u/expdevsmodbot]

AI usage disclosure provided by OP, see the reply to this comment.

[u/BraveResearcher3037]

Why not just look at the PMP curriculum?

I learned about project management from PluralSight.  I am consultant who leads implementation projects and going through the courses have been valuable 

[u/eddyparkinson → u/BraveResearcher3037]

Thanks for the resource, PMP looks close to PMBoK in terms of topics.

I constantly wish I had more examples when teaching these topics.

[u/Ok_Aerie7427]

To be honest none of these can be learnt in school.

[u/eddyparkinson → u/Ok_Aerie7427]

>learnt 

I think learnt is a gray scale. Knowing it exists. Know of a few examples. Know of exceptions. Used it to solve real world problems many times over.

Edit: We know from the research that true stoies help. Students remember true stories better than almost anything else,, if you have any you want to share.

[u/CppIsLife → u/eddyparkinson]

Just look for any failed engineering project, doesn't even have to be software related. Gathering requirements isn't just for software, it's for any major engineering project.

Some examples that cross my mind: * Phoenix pay system in Canada * Mars climate orbiter (the metric vs imperial blunder) * Denver airport baggage system * F35

[u/eddyparkinson → u/CppIsLife]

Nice list.

Google/AI just gave me a good list with "list of failed failed software engineering projects".

[u/theuniquebaron]

Get them doing mock client interviews early on, nothing teaches requirements gathering like a stakeholder who keeps changing their mind halfway through

[u/eddyparkinson → u/theuniquebaron]

I do share this youtube video with them:

Rob Fitzpatrick - How to Learn from Customers When Everyone is Lying to You

Also they create: As-is and To-be use cases to understand the scale of the impact.

[u/BartvanIngenSchenau → u/eddyparkinson]

Let them practice with faculty members and last-year students.

[u/eddyparkinson → u/BartvanIngenSchenau]

Yes, I did this last time. They had to design software that would help teaching staff teach. They have to design As-is and To-be use cases that help teaching staff.

The last year students is a nice twist. Thanks for the idea.

... The problem is, the course I took over taught things like how to create a todo list. I am doing a redesign.

[u/tumtumisdum]

I think going with a PMP curriculum is a better approach

[u/Neoma_Quillin]

As someone who moved from software engineering into project management, I think theory alone isn't enough. Requirements gathering and project management are huge topics, and you learn a lot more when you apply them to real projects. Understanding user stories and use case diagrams is useful, but knowing how to handle changing requirements, conflicting stakeholder expectations, and scope creep comes from experience. I would recommend giving students a realistic project to work on from start to finish, so they can practice these concepts rather than just learn the terminology.

[u/apartment-seeker]

heh, you think this aspect of the job can be learned via materials

this is inexperienced talk

[u/eddyparkinson → u/apartment-seeker]

I woud agree hands on learning is often better. But I had no idea you could measure defect density when I first started creating business software, I didn't learn about defect density in my BSc in IT. After using it on many real projects, I understand why people say it reduces project costs by 30-50% ....

I have seen 10 years of work end up in the bin because people didn't know how to measure defect density.

There are a lot of topics in that list I wish I had been taught in my degree.

See my reply to Ok_Aerie7427