An analysis of Kanban as a project monitoring tool in undergraduate courses

Project monitoring poses a relevant role for project success and it is considered more fundamental in a distributed environment since it confronts additional risks such as culture, geographical, and temporal barriers. Recognizing the complexity and importance of a distributed project, it is vital that undergraduate students receive practical experience and are trained to face the obstacles this form of development imposes, as well as be able to monitor the project progress. The challenge is to take all of these concepts and apply them to a technology course that will not only provide a mechanism for teachers to monitor the evolution of students' projects but also expose students to a production environment for the application of Kanban in monitoring projects in a distributed environment. To validate the efficiency of the technique introduced in this paper, an experimental test was carried out with undergraduate students from different careers, skills, cultures, personalities, and professional experiences to enhance the obstacles encountered in a real distributed environment. The outcome demonstrates the students are partially able to monitor their project and based on the results, some recommendations were made for the use of the Kanban tool in project monitoring during the education process.