Teaching agile software development through lab courses

With the days of the lone coder long gone, it is critical in our education of young computer scientists to lay particular emphasis on the “softer” spots of software development: How to organize a development process, how to deal with teams of software engineers with different skills and motivations, and how to produce outstanding software despite hard deadlines and (ideally) a 40-hour-week. In this paper, we report on the setup, execution, and results of two software development labs with a specific focus on agile methodologies conducted in 2010 and 2011 at our university. Not only are agile methods widespread in practice today; with their focus on human interaction and work-life balance, we believe that experiencing a full agile product development cycle in the risk-free academic environment is a benefit not only for our students´ technical skills, but to their social skills as well.