Bringing Agile to Universities

A journey to the academic world

@mlainezMarc Lainez

What are the obstacles when adopting Agile?

It’s hard to change how people think

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.

- Woodrow Wilson -

It’s hard to change bad habits

It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.

- Benjamin Franklin -

Barriers to agile adoption

http://www.versionone.com/state_of_agile_development_survey/11/

Ability to change organizational culture

Availability of personnel with right skills

General resistance to change 39%

40%

52%

You need the right mindset

And make this guy embrace it!

We have really good agilists for that!

Helping people and companies

http://leanpub.com/WhoIsAgile@YvesHanoulle

But sometimes it’s already too late...

How can we help?

Focus on universities

We need to open students minds to Agilewith projects, workshops, lectures

http://agilecampustour.org

30hrs delivered so fara lot more preparing...

still more to come...

Brussels - ULB

University Antwerp

UCLLouvain-la-Neuve

UMons UMons - Charleroi

Great! But...

walk into universities

One does not simply

We got back in touch with our assistant teachersstudent organizations in other campuses

We organized lectures and workshops

Lectures to show students how it is like to

work on an “Agile” project

Adapting the schedule to the different campuses we went to

We presented Agile techniques in the context of a fictional project

http://www.slideshare.net/agilecampustour

We got great feedback!

And improved on the way, but still...

“It’s for small projects”

“Not technical enough”

“It’s not for serious projects”

“It’s project management, I don’t really feel concerned”

“It’s not going deep enough”

Assumptions are hard to kill...

Use visuals

Be dynamic

Involve them

Some examples :)

How complex is it to get from those fruits a small piece you could eat?

3

How many can you eat in 1 minute?

User story writing and estimation

workshop

We tried poker planning with them

And explained business value with poker chips

Time-box

Get help!

Self-organizing team and pair-programming workshop

Using a simple Kanban

TDD is hard to teach to students...

Cyber-dojo.com@JonJagger

“TDD+Pair Programming = Super”

“I wish we could do that more often”

“Frustrating but awesome!”

“I’d like to do more stuff like that on my projects”

“I liked working with somebody else”

Make sure they have everything needed on their computers

If you need IT support in the uni, do it way before the workshop

Great, but did it change anything?

What now?

Open library Co-Working

Agile Summer Camp Academic seminar about Agile

You could do the same in your city or country...

And contribute to create a more Agile generation!

Thank you!

@mlainezml@theotherguys.be