Learning Global Agile Software Engineering Using Same-Site and Cross-Site Teams

Abstract

We describe an experience in teaching global software engineering (GSE) using distributed Scrum augmented with industrial best practices. Our unique instructional technique had students work in both same-site and cross-site teams to contrast the two modes of working. The course was a collaboration . Fifteen Canadian and eight Finnish students worked on a single large project, divided into four teams, working on interdependent user stories as negotiated with the industrial product owner located in Finland. Half way through the course, we changed the teams so each student worked in both a local and a distributed team. We studied student learning using a mixedmethod approach including 14 post-course interviews, pre-course and Sprint questionnaires, observations, meeting recordings, and repository data from git and Flowdock, the primary communication tool. Our results show no significant differences between working in distributed vs. non-distributed teams, suggesting that Scrum helps alleviate many GSE problems. Our post-course interviews and survey data allows us to explain this effect; we found that students over time learned to better self-select tasks with less inter-team dependencies, to communicate more, and to work better in teams.

Agile Development in Software Engineering Instruction

“…However, it remains unclear whether negative cases have been reported to the same extent as positive outcomes. As far as agile working methods have been studied in multicultural groups [4], or in courses on software business [23], our results are compatible. Nevertheless, the results of this study extend beyond agile courses, as in the present case, agile work has been expanded to the entire curriculum.…”

“…Much of higher education still depends on very traditional teaching practices and conventional curricula. First efforts to include agile methods to higher education were made more than a decade ago [3], and currently, courses on agile development are widely offered as part of software engineering curricula [4,5,6]. However, actual use of agile methods as educational practices is less common but a widespread use is probably on the brink of breakthrough [7].…”

Industry Trends in Software Engineering Education: A Systematic Mapping Study

“…This was reported in more than 70% of the reviewed publications. The context in academia is multifold, including GSE [17,48], inverted classrooms [49], capstone projects [50] and even SEE for millennial students including tech startups [51]. Other methods, such as Kanban or XP, have been adopted in capstone courses [50].…”

“…Academia has tried to fill these gaps, as well as other issues, related to student readiness to fulfill industry requirements, mentioned in [8], by developing courses that have a longer duration or rely on capstone projects or flipped classrooms. In these cases, graduate student projects in software engineeringrelated courses adopt the idea of prototyping through industry customer-driven [9,10], free and open source software (FOSS) [11], play money [12], startup, innovation, and creativity-driven [13], on-site or online training platforms [14,15] or other models or methods exploiting agile or scrum methodology at the local or global scale [16,17]. However, the non-realistic toy project has been considered to bring more harm [18] than help.…”

Taking a Studio Course in Distributed Software Engineering from a Large Local Cohort to a Small Global Cohort

“…One common approach has been to set up cross-institutional collaborations, whereby student teams from universities in different countries work together on a software project [16,18,36,47,54]. Each of the local teams meets together physically on a campus, but is geographically distant from their collaborators at the other institution.…”