Software Project Management Education: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Software project management (SPM) is a significant field, related to the discipline of software engineering, which has attracted a huge number of researchers and practitioners in recent years. The role of software project management education (SPME) is essential to instill appropriate competencies in SPM students so that they could be able to deliver effectively in the software industry as SPM professionals. As the demand of SPM professionals is continuously increasing, the responsibilities of academia have also been increased to ensure and provide the solid basis and quality education to SPM. In this context, a number of methods and tools have been deliberated to examine SPME from various dimensions. The usefulness of these methods and tools need to be synthesized and evaluated to investigate the areas that could be used to improve the various aspects of SPME. The main objective of this research is to evaluate the techniques that have been applied to teach SPME and identify the future directions that could lead to make improvements in SPME. This article presents a review of eighty-nine research papers of SPME that have been classified and synthesized according to different aspects of SPME. These aspects include type and approach of conducted research, empirical type, SPM knowledge areas, and curricula. The principal findings emerged after analyzing the results of reviewing the SPME research have been discussed in detail. Lastly, a list of advice to SPM instructors, based on the prominent and effective practices of SPME, has also been presented in this study.