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ABSTRACT
This paper presents a framework for teaching a complete, semester-long IT project management course with traditional PMI-based content (sans software development) while featuring Scrum as the organizing logic for accomplishing coursework. This framework adapts widely-used Scrum practices from industry for use in the classroom, including how to organize student teams, homework, and activities. Organizing an existing course with Scrum is intended to maximize student learning of traditional proj ect management content, as well as the difficult-to-teach, socially-complex, "soft" skills that lead to Scrum team success. This deep integration of Scrum into a traditional, predictive IT project management course goes well beyond single activities or units without crowding out valuable time and material. A brief overview of the agile philosophy and examples of teaching Scrum in the classroom situate this work in the teaching and learning literature. Classroom-tested Scrum rituals and example artifacts are provided to illustrate how to apply the framework. This group-based, iterative, and hands-on approach equips students to better internalize and understand the complex social interactions involved with a self-organizing team, concepts that are difficult to learn without first-hand experience. The proposed framework will help IS educators implement Scrum practices in their own courses, further addressing industry's increasing demand for IS professionals with Scrum experience.
Keywords: Project management, Agile, Scrum, Pedagogy, Teaching framework, Active learning
1.INTRODUCTION
This paper presents a teaching framework for integrating Scrum in a traditional, predictive IT project management course. The goals of this framework are threefold: (1) to teach modern agile principles to upper division students with varying degrees of project experience independently from software development, (2) to teach traditional project management techniques and tools as embodied in the Project Management Institute's (PMI) Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), and (3) for self-organizing student teams to develop important soft skills (e.g., peer leadership, conflict resolution, and communication). Agile is arguably the most prevalent philosophy for quickly and responsively developing software, and agile frameworks such as Scrum and eXtreme Programming have gained significant adoption in software development curricula (Devedzic and Milenkovic, 2011; Mahnic, 2012; Lang, 2017). However, scant literature explores how to implement agile frameworks to teach project management to IS business students. In 2015, as the primary author was preparing a project management course, he could not...