Exploiting Multiplicity to Teach Reliability and Maintainability in a Capstone Project

Many, if not most, Computer Science programs contain some form of capstone, or senior, project as a key requirement in receiving a bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering. One decision that needs to be made is if all the students should be developing versions of the same project or if each project should be different. In this paper we describe how having multiple teams working on the same project can enrich the capstone experience by supporting reflection on the impact the quality of their code and documentation has on the reliability and maintainability of the final product.