C4 model in a Software Engineering subject to ease the comprehension of UML and the software development process

Abstract

Software engineering provides the competences and skills to design and develop robust, secure and efficient applications that solve real problems. Students have to develop their abstract thinking to find solutions taking into account not only technical development, but economic and social impact. In previous years, different changes have been introduced in the teaching methods with significant outcomes. However, students are still facing difficulties with one of the core contents of the subject, UML. For this reason, the present work aims to introduce C4 model as a complement of the existing UML diagrams. This proposal uses the two first levels of the C4 model to complement the requirements elicitation process, traditionally based only on use cases, to let students start the design of their systems without going into greater technical details