8,491 research outputs found
Addressing challenges to teach traditional and agile project management in academia
In order to prepare students for a professional IT career, most universities attempt to provide a current
educational curriculum in the Project Management (PM) area to their students. This is usually based on
the most promising methodologies used by the software industry. As instructors, we need to balance
traditional methodologies focused on proven project planning and control processes leveraging widely
accepted methods and tools along with the newer agile methodologies. Such new frameworks
emphasize that software delivery should be done in a flexible and iterative manner and with significant
collaboration with product owners and customers. In our experience agile methodologies have
witnessed an exponential growth in many diverse software organizations, and the various agile PM tools
and techniques will continue to see an increase in adoption in the software development sector.
Reflecting on these changes, there is a critical need to accommodate best practices and current methodologies in our courses that deliver Project Management content. In this paper we analyse two of the most widely used methodologies for traditional and agile software development â the widely used
ISO/PMBOK standard provided by the Project Management Institute and the well-accepted Scrum
framework. We discuss how to overcome curriculum challenges and deliver a quality undergraduate PM
course for a Computer Science and Information systems curricula. Based on our teaching experience
in Europe and North America, we present a comprehensive comparison of the two approaches. Our research covers the main concepts, processes, and roles associated with the two PM frameworks and recommended learning outcomes. The paper should be of value to instructors who are keen to see their computing students graduate with a sound understanding of current PM methodologies and who can deliver real-world software products.Accepted manuscrip
Beyond Surveys: Analyzing Software Development Artifacts to Assess Teaching Efforts
This Innovative Practice Full Paper presents an approach of using software
development artifacts to gauge student behavior and the effectiveness of
changes to curriculum design. There is an ongoing need to adapt university
courses to changing requirements and shifts in industry. As an educator it is
therefore vital to have access to methods, with which to ascertain the effects
of curriculum design changes. In this paper, we present our approach of
analyzing software repositories in order to gauge student behavior during
project work. We evaluate this approach in a case study of a university
undergraduate software development course teaching agile development
methodologies. Surveys revealed positive attitudes towards the course and the
change of employed development methodology from Scrum to Kanban. However,
surveys were not usable to ascertain the degree to which students had adapted
their workflows and whether they had done so in accordance with course goals.
Therefore, we analyzed students' software repository data, which represents
information that can be collected by educators to reveal insights into learning
successes and detailed student behavior. We analyze the software repositories
created during the last five courses, and evaluate differences in workflows
between Kanban and Scrum usage
Scrum2Kanban: Integrating Kanban and Scrum in a University Software Engineering Capstone Course
Using university capstone courses to teach agile software development
methodologies has become commonplace, as agile methods have gained support in
professional software development. This usually means students are introduced
to and work with the currently most popular agile methodology: Scrum. However,
as the agile methods employed in the industry change and are adapted to
different contexts, university courses must follow suit. A prime example of
this is the Kanban method, which has recently gathered attention in the
industry. In this paper, we describe a capstone course design, which adds the
hands-on learning of the lean principles advocated by Kanban into a capstone
project run with Scrum. This both ensures that students are aware of recent
process frameworks and ideas as well as gain a more thorough overview of how
agile methods can be employed in practice. We describe the details of the
course and analyze the participating students' perceptions as well as our
observations. We analyze the development artifacts, created by students during
the course in respect to the two different development methodologies. We
further present a summary of the lessons learned as well as recommendations for
future similar courses. The survey conducted at the end of the course revealed
an overwhelmingly positive attitude of students towards the integration of
Kanban into the course
Open Source Tools to Support Teaching Agile Software Development
Learning agile software development methodologies are important due to the popularity of agility in software industry. Agile software development has several practices and each practice needs specific tools to work with. Fortunately, there are plenty of open source tools to support working with the agile practices. However, each tool is a separate tool and there is no information about the interrelation of those open source tools. In this paper we propose a set of open source tools to support agile software development course. We start from identifying the principles and practices of agile software development and continue with examining open source tools that fit with agile practices. The relationship between the open source tools is also determined, based on their functionalities
Towards a situated media practice: Reflections on the implementation of project-led problem-based learning
In the field of media practice education, project-based learning is utilized as a major pedagogic paradigm with the aim of mirroring professional practice within the curriculum. However, if the use of project-based learning is to be considered as more than just a way of administrating student activity, then educators need a critical understanding of how problem encounters order practice within the life cycle of a project. The drawing together of practice-based, project-based and problem-based approaches allows us to see the overlapping nature of these approaches and also differentiate them as unique pedagogies in their own right. It is argued here that this tension between similarity and difference requires a new way of thinking about mirroring professional practice within higher education, one which offers a theory of project-based learning as a productive pedagogy which places problem encounters at its heart
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Enterprise Agility: Why Is Transformation so Hard?
Enterprise agility requires capabilities to transform, sense and seize new business opportunities more quickly than competitors. However, acquiring those capabilities, such as continuous delivery and scaling agility to product programmes, portfolios and business models, is challenging in many organisations. This paper introduces definitions of enterprise agility involving business management and cultural lenses for analysing large-scale agile transformation. The case organisation, in the higher education domain, leverages collaborative discovery sprints and an experimental programme to enable a bottom-up approach to transformation. Meanwhile the prevalence of bureaucracy and organisational silos are often contradictory to agile principles and values. The case study results identify transformation challenges based on observations from a five-month research period. Initial findings indicate that increased focus on organisational culture and leveraging of both bottom-up innovation and supportive top-down leadership activities, could enhance the likelihood of a successful transformation
The business of invention: considering project management in the arts and industry
Project management has well developed theoretical constructs and is becom- ing increasingly well established in core strategy beyond the industrial and corporate sec- tors from which it first emerged. With a concurrent increase in the significance of innova- tion, project managing for creativity is an area of research and enquiry of considerable sig- nificance. Notionally occupying polar opposite cultural positions in terms of perspectives and processes of creativity, project management in the arts is widely considered to vary significantly from corporate strategy and process. If business were to be more generally characterised by âorganisationâ and discipline, the arts are more commonly celebrated for disorganisation, indiscipline, and the fundamental challenge to organisation itself. Consid- ering both the confluences and variations between established project management theory in business and practice in the arts, this text introduces theoretical constructs pertaining to creative processes and highlights areas for consideration in the understanding and further development of project management theory
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