Students´ perceptions of Scrum practices

In order to prepare students for increasing use of agile methods in industry, teaching these methods is becoming an important part of the Software Engineering curricula. At the University of Ljubljana Scrum has been systematically taught since 2009 in the framework of the software engineering capstone course. The paper describes the course content and analyzes results of the survey that was performed among students with the aim of identifying those practices that students perceive most important for the success of Scrum-based software projects. Students´ opinions on 12 typical practices representing possible success factors are described and compared to opinions of professional developers in order to find out similarities and differences in their perceptions. Both groups of respondents identified team-work and communication among team members, as well as good communication with the Product Owner, most important. Students also stressed the importance of strict adherence to the notion of “done”, while professional developers ranked third Sprint Planning Meetings and maintenance of Sprint Backlog. Accuracy of user stories and velocity estimation was rated least important by both groups of respondents.