Training students to choose their agile practices and tools

Abstract

We present our experiences in training computer science students in agile software development over two academic years. The product to build was a specialized Twitter client, with instructors refining its requirements throughout the course. We observed over a hundred students divided into teams of approximately five members each. To support agile collaboration and self-tracking, we provided students with a comprehensive software development environment consisting solely of opensource tools. Before commencing their cooperation, we encouraged students to engage in team-building activities to foster better mutual understanding. We adopted the Essence approach to instill an agile mindset and facilitated retrospectives tailored to the students’ needs. Key findings include the effective use of the adaptable Scrum framework with support from the Essence approach to agile teamwork. Although the constraint of using exclusively on-premises open-source software tools posed some challenges for the students, all produced data and documents were accessible for inspection by the instructors. Additionally, the utilization of a product quality model and team maturity model proved valuable for evaluating and comparing the teams. Notably, all teams successfully completed their tasks within the designated timeframe.