Simultaneous Improvement
From the students' point of view the work is not divided into phases. Students plan and control the work collectively and continuously in order to improve quality and quantity of all artifacts. In a project several kinds of artifacts exist, so called artifact sets, e.g. requirements specifications, design documents and programs. In EASE all artifact sets are improved simultaneously. Completing one certain artifact set before beginning to work on another one in a stagewise fashion is considered a strong antipattern by EASE. Mutual dependencies between different kinds of artifacts are complex. Proceeding in a rigorously stagewise fashion may mislead students, because such a practice may fail and therefore may obfuscate the importance of different kinds of artifacts. Students have to decide which artifact set to emphasize at a given moment. This way, students can gain experience about the importance of different kinds of artifacts by trial and error.