Agile for agile - new ideas for the transformation of student projects

Abstract

The IT working practice is becoming more agile. To prepare students for the agile workplace we decided to transfer our well established student projects with external customers towards an agile approach. This paper describes the iterative improvement process within an IT Bachelor degree course. As we were not sure how to teach an agile framework in an university setting, we chose an open approach, based on action research. Action research includes the agile principles of iteration, inspect and adapt. Our transformation process was not only iterative but also involved all relevant stakeholders. In the described process students, lecturers, external company members and agile experts participated equally. This led to a collection of new ideas on how to design agile projects in an university context. They were partly implemented and evaluated. We report on three iterations and provide the lessons learned in a condensed Scrum-Guide for student projects.