Flipping the Script on Project Management Practices in Education: Outcomes of Applying Agile Development Methodologies in a Classroom Setting

Abstract

In this paper, an application of Agile Devel-opment Methodologies (ADM) to university project ori-ented courses is presented. A multidisciplinary student team applies Waterfall and Agile (Scrum) project man-agement strategies over a period of 10 months to a pro-ject based capstone course. The study primarily focuses on evaluating the two methodologies across five catego-ries – student confidence, student awareness, stakeholder confidence, stakeholder awareness, and project success. Results suggest that overall Agile can be more effective than Waterfall. Due to practices such as daily standups and frequent sprint planning, the student team and stake-holders found they were not only able to stay up to date with the progress of the overall project but also found there was enough time allocated to address the ever-changing nature of requirements brought on by the pro-ject. The lessons learned and recommendations provided in this study are generalized such that they can be applied in other project based courses as well.