> A few students came to me asking if I had any ideas for a software project that they could work on outside of class.
> I explained an idea for a utility that I had been wanting: A desktop program that monitors my clipboard for URLs and logs them automatically.
I think this person misunderstood the students, the student wanted a project to practice programming, not a project to practice project management. The programming parts of this would take 2-4 hours, it isn't a terribly hard thing to code. All the project management parts would take days or weeks or even months or years depending on how polished you want it to be.
Giving them a project management project because in your mind project management is more important just to prove a point doesn't help them at all.
> I explained an idea for a utility that I had been wanting: A desktop program that monitors my clipboard for URLs and logs them automatically.
I think this person misunderstood the students, the student wanted a project to practice programming, not a project to practice project management. The programming parts of this would take 2-4 hours, it isn't a terribly hard thing to code. All the project management parts would take days or weeks or even months or years depending on how polished you want it to be.
Giving them a project management project because in your mind project management is more important just to prove a point doesn't help them at all.