Teaching Agile Software Development at University Level

Abstract

Several recent surveys show that agile methodologies like Scrum, Extreme Programming and Kanban have been successfully adopted by many companies for software development. However, the same surveys show that only few of the agile practices are applied consequently and thoroughly. This is to a great extent due to the lack of skilled personnel. In this paper we propose a more holistic approach for teaching agile software development, in which the required agile practices and values are not only integrated theoretically into our courses but also practically applied. The proposed concept was realized in a new a course at Zurich University of Applied Sciences during 2012. The evaluation shows very encouraging results.