Interdisciplinary Agile Teaching

This innovative practice paper describes a projectbased group work where conversion master students developed the skills required for agile software development methods. There are many examples of agile methods taught in, for instance, capstone courses in software engineering programmes. It has been shown to be a popular and beneficial method of learning. However, most agile teams in the software industry are made up of members with different educational backgrounds (i.e. not just software developers, as there will also business analysts, designers, testers etc.). Such a diversity of roles might be beneficial in teaching agile methods in an academic setting. This reflective educational paper describes the evolution of an industry sourced problem-based agile student project, which over three successive years has included students from three different faculties. Although the experience has broadly been positive each year, this paper describes and reflects on both the good and problematic observations that the teaching staff has made over the years. The changes of the projects has been based by reflecting on these insights. These reflections are described and several recommendations are drawn from the experiences. These include, that it is important that the cohorts collaborate and work together in parallel. Individual groups, of diverse cohorts, should work in isolation. It is important to have industrial partners who are participating actively in the process, and it is important to not underestimate the work that is required by the academics to coordinate the projects to make them successful.