Learning Soft Skills through Distributed Software Development

The software industry needs universities to train developers to have besides the technical skills, also strong soft skills to collaborate in globally distributed software development projects. To develop these soft skills, we organized a distributed online software development project course, during which student Scrum teams of 5–8 members from five Belarusian universities worked in industrial projects for Danish customers. The course aimed to 1) teach students the Scrum framework and soft skills, such as teamwork and communication with international customers; and 2) to give Belarusian teachers ideas for organizing similar courses in the future. Based on 20 post-course semi-structured interviews with students and stakeholders, and the analysis of 24 student learning diaries we studied the learning outcomes and challenges related to soft skills. The main reported learning outcomes were: communication, methodical use of Scrum, problem solving, organizational/planning skills, teamwork, interpersonal skills, and time management.