Tesis y Tesistas 2020 - Postgrado - Fac. de Informática - UNLP

Especialización
TECNOLOGÍA INFORMÁTICA
APLICADA EN EDUCACIÓN
Esp. Nicolás Martín Páez
e-mail
nicopaez@computer.org
Advisor
Lic. Alejandro Oliveros
Codirector
Dra. María Alejandra Zangara
Thesis defense date
July 13, 2020
SEDICI
http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/101167
Teaching agile software
development methods in Argentina.
State of the art
Keywords: Education, Teaching, Agile Methods, Software Engineering
Motivation
Agile methods emerged in the late 1990s, although their
formal birth is usually cited in 2001 with the publication
of the Agile Manifesto. Since then, the popularity of agile
methods has been on the rise. As early as 2010, a Forrester
study indicated that agile methods had reached the
mainstream. This great popularity of agile methods that
emerged in the industrial field was gradually permeating
the academy. Nowadays it is very common to find works
on agile methods in Software Engineering conferences and
there are even industrial and academic conferences entirely
focused on this topic. Classic software engineering books
like those by Pressman and Sommerville have included
agile methods several editions ago. Various works have
been presented reporting experiences in teaching agile
methods. Some of them suggest a certain superficiality
in the approach to this topic, which makes it difficult
for students to perform at the time of their professional
insertion. On the other hand, there are some more general
experiences about the teaching of Software Engineering
that describe the use of non-traditional strategies such as
flipped classroom and student-centered learning. However,
there are no studies on the state of the art of teaching agile
methods that specifically address the situation in Argentina
nor that analyze the way in which these methods are taught
in terms of pedagogical / didactic aspects and mediation
dynamics. On the other hand, although the IEEE and
ACM curricular recommendations for careers in Software
Engineering and Information Technology explicitly mention
agile methods, the regulations of the Ministry of Education
of Argentina on software engineering and computer science
programs do not make any mention of this topic.
This situation represents the motivation for this research work.
The goal of this work is to establish the state of the art
of the Teaching of Agile Software Development Methods
in Argentina. This work aims to establish to what extent
and in what way universities have incorporated this topic
in Argentina. More precisely, it is intended to identify the
teaching methodologies used and the teaching mediation
and support technologies that are used.
In terms of research methodology, the first approach was to
run a systematic literature review. The results of that review
were insufficient to answer all the research questions posed.
So a field survey was run among software engineering
professors from various Argentine universities.
Thesis Final Work contrinutions
The results obtained in this research indicate that agile
methods are taught in 97.7% of the bachelor’s degrees
surveyed. 83.8% of those surveyed teach their subjects
completely in person and a portion of them implement
some degree of hybridization in their proposals, given
by the use of virtual campuses. The percentage of use of
information technologies is not surprising considering that
they are technology majors and that their students are
digital natives.
The 77% of respondents indicated teaching Scrum, but
only 53% indicated teaching Retrospectives, which is
undoubtedly one of the most important Scrum practices.
Iteration Planning, Iteration Review, and Daily Standup are
all core Scrum practices and their teaching percentage is
significantly lower than Scrum.
Regarding agile practices; User Stories, Iteration Planning,
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