AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT IN EVOLVING BUSINESS ENVIRONMENTS: INTEGRATING MODERN TECHNIQUES INTO COMPUTER SCIENCE CURRICULA
L Janet · 2011
In today’s fast-changing business environment software is playing an increasing important role in essential organizational operations. A great many challenges are arising throughout the software development lifecycle as budgets become tighter, applications expand, and technologies change rapidly. Such conditions often create difficulties including coding errors, customer dissatisfaction, changes to business requirements, personnel turnover, missed deadlines, and even cancellation of projects. Agile methods are a set of modern and successful concepts in software development that are increasingly being integrated in the global business environment; they are designed to address the common problems faced when developing software. As agile techniques become more prevalent in industry, it is becoming especially important to incorporate agile methods into traditional computer science curricula. In this paper we describe some of the key agile techniques, how they directly apply to today’s business environment, and how they are taught in Webster University’s agile development course. Further, we describe ways in which some of the concepts are presented and implemented in this course, and report on how these ideas influence the graduate program.