Course syllabus

Welcome to DAT257/DIT257 Agile Software Project Management. LP1 HT26 (7.5 hp)

This is a practical project course, so you will apply agile methods to develop a software project in a small group.

This course aims to give you an introduction to Agile Development Methodologies. You will work on an open problem that is related to the United Nations Sustainability Goals. By iterative planning and evaluating your work, you organize yourself in order to reach a joint goal with limited resources. To do this, you apply an agile software development process to structure your work. You will reflect on your work and learning every week to enable a continuous improvement of your way of working. At the same time, you acquire skills and knowledge in new technologies, tools, and fitting ways to use them to provide value to a stakeholder based on the student's own learning strategies. 

Learning outcomes 

After completion of this course, the student should possess the following understanding, skills, abilities, and judgment:

With knowledge and understanding, the student should:

• Describe software engineering as an engineering discipline by using relevant terminology
• Describe the relationship between stakeholder, product, and process

Skills and abilities: the student should

• Specify, implement, and evaluate a system based on what different stakeholders perceive as valuable
• Learn tools and APIs that are relevant to the project in collaboration with the other team members, including the use of generative AI
• apply a structured software development process as a member of a team

Judgment and approach: the student should

• reflect on how the process was applied in a project
• reflect on their own and the team's learning strategies
• Optional: reflect on the usage of generative AI in software development projects

AI Usage policy: 

Regarding the AI usage, please make sure you don't use any AI in your projects or to write your reflections, vision doc, or final reports.

Contact details

Course Responsible and Examiner:
Irum Inayat, Senior Lecturer, Interaction Design and Software Engineering
(irum@chalmers.se)

Co-Lecturers:

Vladislav Indykov (PhD Student) (indykov@chalmers.se)

Teaching Assistants:

First Name	Last Name	Email Address
Adam	Sindler	gussinad@student.gu.se
Jenifa	Mariyanayagam	jenifa@student.chalmers.se
Júlia	Bonato Antunes	gusbonaju@student.gu.se
Joonsuh	Kim	joons@chalmers.se
Artemis	Mokhtari	gusmokhtar@student.gu.se
Sophie	Vervoort	gusvervso@student.gu.se
Waheeba Wajid	Rasul	guswajiwa@student.gu.se
Mohamed Taha	Jasser	gusjasmoa@student.gu.se
Casper	Hansen	casperha@student.chalmers.se

Course Representatives:

 Carl Lindestorm calind@chalmers.se

More to be announced soon.

If you want to be the course representative, please write to me at irum@chalmers.se. 

 

Mandatory Scrum Exercise: This course has one mandatory Scrum Exercise session that is on 9th September. We will have two sessions, one in the morning from 0900 to 1200 and the other in the afternoon from 1300 to 1600. Groups will be assigned sessions according to their number. This exercise is a mock of how to use scrum in your project in a playful way using LEGO. If you miss this exercise due to any reason, you will do the replacement exercise to pass the course. For that, you have to inform me prior to the exercise day through email that you will do otherwise. 

Project: The group project is the core of this course: In a team of 5 students, you will develop a software product that solves a real-world problem related to the UN sustainability goals. The document explaining the whole project can be found here. 

The teams have weekly supervision meetings with their allocated TA. The project is supplemented by exercises and lectures that provide insight into the assignment students are working on and software engineering in general. Weekly supervision is an integral part of the course design, and the students and the teaching staff together make sense of the learning objectives concerning the students' experience. Students will submit weekly reflections as a team and individually after each iteration, followed by a demonstration session of the developed module(s) with their respective TAs.

Unless stated otherwise, all lectures and exercises will be on campus. However, in agreement with the TA, the group supervision can be conducted remotely.

Details of the schedule can be seen here: Timeedit

Please follow Canvas and TimeEdit for any runtime change in the venue (which is highly unlikely, but in case it happens).

Course structure

Weekday, time, and room	Description	Link to material/assignment
1/9 10:00 - 11:45 TP-L26	Module 1: Introduction to Agile Software Development and the Scrum Framework	See module 1
3/9,  13:15 - 15:00  TP-L21	Module 2: Introduction to Scrum and User Stories	See module 2
9/9 Session 1 - 0900-1145 [TP-L11] Session 2-1315-1545 [TP-L11]	Module 3: Scrum In Practice Assignment A: Scrum exercise.	See module 3
14/9 Monday 23:59	Assignment B: Team setup and social contract.	Link to assignments
15/9 1000-1145 ML-13	Module 4: Agile Teams
18/9 Friday 23:59	Assignment C: Project scope/vision. Assignment D: Setup of git and Kanban board.
22/9 1000-1145 ML-13	Module 5: Technical Agile
25/9 Friday 23:59	Assignment F-1: Weekly sprint reflection. Assignment G-1: Individual reflections.	Link to assignments
Friday 2/10 23:59	Assignment F-2: Weekly sprint reflection. Assignment G-2: Individual reflections.	Link to assignments
6/10  1000-1145 ML-13	Module 6: Risk Management
13/10  1000-1145 ML-13	Module 7: HUMAN ASPECTS Leadership, conflict management, and cognitive biases
Friday 9/10  23:59	Assignment F-3: Weekly sprint reflection. Assignment G-3: Individual reflections.	Link to assignments
Friday 16/10 23:59	Assignment F-4: Weekly sprint reflection. Assignment G-4: Individual reflections.	Link to assignments
Thursday 21/10 23:59	Assignment A-REPLACEMENT ASSIGNMENT  [only for those who missed the mandatory SCRUM exercise held on 1/4]	Link to assignments
Friday 23/10 23:59	Assignment F-5: Weekly sprint reflection. Assignment G-5: Individual reflections.	Link to assignments
Friday 30/10 23:59	Assignment H: Investor pitch video. Assignment K: Final Report	Link to assignments
Friday 30/10 23:59	Assignment I:  PODCAST [Retrospective]	Assignment J: Podcast

Assignments Overview

All assignments can be found here. The course consists of the following assignments:

• Assignment A: Participation in exercise [it is determined by your presence in the SCRUM exercise and submission of group reflection]
• Assignment A: Replacement Assignment [only for those who missed the SCRUM exercise]
• Assignment B: Team setup and social contact. 
• Assignment C: Project scope description.
• Assignment D: Setup of Git repository and Kanban board.
• Assignment F: Group weekly sprint reflections.
• Assignment G: Individual weekly reflections 
• Assignment H: Investor pitch video.
• Assignment I: Podcast
• Assignment K: Final Report 

All assignments must be passed in order to pass the course.

Course literature

Initial course literature for each topic can be found in the respective Modules.