For the last ten years we have been teaching a capstone course for fifth year
students of the Computer Science Department of the Universidad de Chile. Five
year ago we redesigned the course, shifting from projects following a waterfall
process and focused on technical aspects, to one centered in soft skills
following agile practices. Since then, we provide out students a concrete
learning outcome: to internalize how relevant is having and developing critical
soft skills to succeed in projects. Last year, we wondered whether our students
were actually getting what we declared. We conducted a survey on students'
initial and final perception about the relative value and difficulty of
different dimensions involved in their projects: technical challenge, teamwork,
planning, and negotiation with the client. Also, we applied a one-tailed
dependent pair sample t-test to determine the statistical significance of the
surveys result. We found out that the relative value of soft skills grows while
that of the technical challenge drops, and that the students find that planning
and teamwork are harder than they expected. Also, we found statistically
significant evidence that, for the soft skills we have measured, the perceived
relative relevance actually changes throughout the course.