Software Industry Experience for High School Students

High school students typically do not have an understanding of what it takes to successfully transition between the high school and professional world. This paper describes how a group of ten high school students participated in a nine-week software development internship program. The interns worked on developing a semi-autonomous vehicle to be controlled remotely by a ground station. They went through the full development life-cycle using formal agile process. The participants gained experience in project management, and how to negotiate with the customer to reduce the complexity of the project to an achievable scope, given available resources (time, personnel, and cost).