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In many studiesin software engineering students are used instead of professionalsoftware developers, although the objective is to draw conclusionsvalid for professional software developers. This paper presentsa study where the difference between the two groups is evaluated.People from the two groups have individually carried out a non-trivialsoftware engineering judgement task involving the assessmentof how ten different factors affect the lead-time of softwaredevelopment projects. It is found that the differences are onlyminor, and it is concluded that software engineering studentsmay be used instead of professional software developers undercertain conditions. These conditions are identified and describedbased on generally accepted criteria for validity evaluationof empirical studies.