Author

  • Fernando Almeida

    • University of Porto, DEEC/DEI, Portugal
    • Portugal

  • AntónioCandeias

    • Higher Institute of Gaya, ISP Gaya, Portugal
    • Portugal

Abstract

Agile methodology as a relatively new approach to software engineering is becoming more popular in both industry and academia. Learning agile software development methodologies will unquestionably increase the capabilities and competences of our students as entry-level software engineers. However, how agile methods and techniques should be taught at the undergraduate level in additional to traditional approaches is still being debated. This study was conducted on a studentprogramming project, with sample size of 23 students from the Informatics Engineering course. The Scrum methodology was adopted and 28 user stories and 4 sprints were created. The results indicate a significant impact on students’ skill improvement and let them to have the first contact with real projects and clients. Besides that, the students agree that the adoption of the Scrum methodology helped them to improve the participation and collaboration. However, some issues were also detected in terms of communication and tasks planning. Therefore, we proposed some polities that could help and boost the software development process inside a classroom.

Keywords

References

  • Abrahamsson, P., Salo, O., Ronkainen, J. & Warsta, J. (2002). Agile software development methods: review and analysis. VTT Publication , 478, 9-36.
  • Akhtar, M., Ahsan, A. & Sadiq, W. (2010). Scrum adoption, acceptance and implementation (a case study of barriers in Pakistan’s IT industry and mandatory improvements). Proceedings of 17th IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Management , 1(1), 458-461.
  • Ambler, S. (2009). Agile adoption rate survey results. Ambysoft White Papers. Available at: http://www.ambysoft.com/surveys/agileFebruary2008.html. [Accessed on 21/02/2012].
  • Burnett, M. (2009). What is end-user software engineering and why does it matter? Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium on End-User Development , 1, 15-28.
  • Buytaert, D. (2010). The commercialization of a volume-driven open source project. Available at: http://buytaert.net/the-commercialization-of-a-volunteer-driven-open-source-project. [Accessed on 23/02/2012].
  • Cohn, M. (2009). Succeeding with agile: software development using SCRUM (1st ed.), Boston: Pearson Education.
  • Deeb, A. (2010). Software development methodologies in industry. Master thesis in Software Engineering, Australian National University, and ANU College of Engineering & Computer Science.
  • Endres, A. (2002). Commentary on James E. Tomayko – software as engineering. Proceedings of the International Conference on History of Computing: software issues , 1, 83-91.
  • Fowler, M. (2006). Using an Agile software process with offshore development. Available at: http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/agileOffshore.html. [Accessed on 23/02/2012].
  • Hanssen, G. & Faegri, T. (2006). Agile customer engagement: a longitudinal qualitative case study. Proceedings of International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering (ISESE) , 1, 1-10.
  • Hicks, M. & Foster, J. (2010). Adapting Scrum to managing a research group. Technical Report CS-TR-4966, University of Maryland, Department of Computer Science.
  • IEEE. (2012). Software engineering as defined by IEEE. Available at: http://free-booksonline.org/computers/software-engineering-computers/software-engineering-as-defined-byieee/. [Accessed on 23/02/2012].
  • Jeffery, R. & Scott, L. (2002). Has twenty-five years of empirical software engineering made a difference? Proceedings of the Ninth Asia-Pacific Software Engineering, 539-547.
  • Lu, H. & Wang, X. (2006). A course design and implementation experience on agile software development methodologies. Proceedings of Software Engineering Research and Practice , 1, 281-288.
  • Perera, G. (2009). Impact of using agile practice for student software projects in computer science education. International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT) , 5(3), 85-100.
  • Rawsthorne, D. & Shimp, D. (2011). Exploring Scrum: the fundamentals (people, product and practices) (1st Ed), Seattle: Create Space.
  • Rico, D. & Sayani, H. (2009). Use of agile methods in software engineering education. Proceedings of 2009 Agile Conference , 1, 174-179.
  • Royce, W. (1970). Managing the development of large software systems. Available at: http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/files/original_waterfall_paper_winston_ro yce.pdf. [Accessed on 17/02/2012].
  • Schwaber, K. (2004). Agile project management with Scrum. Microsoft Press , Redmon, WA.
  • Serena. D. (2007). An introduction to agile software development. Serena White Papers. Available at: http://www.serena.com/docs/repository/solutions/intro-to-agile-devel.pdf. [Accessed on 21/02/2012].
  • Sims, C. & Johnson, H. (2011). The elements of Scrum (1st Ed), New York: Dymaxicon.
  • Stuart, J., Beede, E., Deville, J. & Rimbey, E. (2008). 10 keys to successful Scrum adoption. Construx Software White Papers, 3-17.
  • Sutherland, J. (2001). Agile can scale inventing and reinventing Scrum in five companies. Cutter IT Journal , 14(1), 5-11.
  • Vijayasarathy, L. & Turk, D. (2008). Agile software development: a survey of early adopters. Journal of Information Technology Management , 19(2), 1-8.
  • Wasseman, A. (1996). Towards a discipline of software engineering. IEEE Software , 13(6), 23-31.
  • Weiping, L., Weijie, C. & Ying, L. (2009). Call for implementation: a new software development mode for leveraging the resource of open community. International Journal of Software Engineering and Applications , 2(1), 34-39.

Downloads

No downloads have been recorded for this article yet. Figures appear here once readers begin downloading the full text.

How to Cite

Almeida, F., & Candeias, A. (2012). Using Agile Practice for Student Software Projects. Journal of Education and Vocational Research, 3(9), 280-290. https://doi.org/10.22610/jevr.v3i9.79

Share this article

License

Copyright (c) 2012 Fernando Almeida, AntónioCandeias (Author)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Author (s) should affirm that the material has not been published previously. It has not been submitted and it is not under consideration by any other journal. At the same time author (s) need to execute a publication permission agreement to assume the responsibility of the submitted content and any omissions and errors therein. After submission of revised paper in the light of suggestions of the reviewers, the editorial team  edits and formats manuscripts to bring uniformity and standardization in published material.

This work will be licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) and under condition of the license, users are free to read, copy, remix, transform, redistribute, download, print, search or link to the full texts of articles and even build upon their work as long as they credit the author for the original work. Moreover, as per journal policy author (s) hold and retain copyrights without any restrictions.

Keywords

Section

Research Paper

Published in

Vol. 3 No. 9 (2012) Pedagogy, Enterprise & Digital Learning View issue contents

Published

2012-09-15

Submissions

Have research to publish? Journal of Education and Vocational Research welcomes submissions.

Make a Submission