“Bdikaton”: A Software Inspection Competition in Collaboration with Industry

The Software Engineering department at SCE held an end of course competition in the Quality and Inspections course. As part of the 24-hour Bedikaton Competition students were asked to divide up into groups and inspect an existing application on the market in order to find as many bugs and defects as possible. Proyoli Gaming presented the Real Manager application that enables users to build a soccer team, purchase players and manage the team. The students conducted the software inspection on this application. 

After becoming familiar with the application in the laboratory, the students embarked on a day of work in the aim of finding as many errors (bugs) and defects as possible in the system. The students employed all the methods learned in the course and inspected the application in different environments, among them Android, iPhone and Desktop. The metrics used to measure the students were the number and quality of bugs, their contribution to the company and the extent to which the students used theories and methods learned in the course.

“For the competition Proyoli inserted eight to ten bugs into the system”, said Dr. Hadas Hasidim, a lecturer in the SCE Quality and Inspections course. “Our students were able to find tens of additional bugs in the system. The goal of the Bedikaton was to give students a final project which also demonstrates how the course contributes to the industry and software world. The students learned about teamwork under pressure, like real company owners, while the company enjoyed an important service that helped it learn about and correct problems in the system.”

The competition is part of a long series of SCE projects carried out under the Project Oriented study method. This method is based on learning while doing, implemented in a wide range of classes throughout the degree studies. The students experience teamwork in solving engineering problems in industry, accompanied by close academic and practical supervision adapted to a changing reality. The aim of the Project Oriented learning method is to prepare students for the labor market, and numerous studies have even shown a relationship between the success of engineering graduates in the engineering world and curriculums based on this method.