From Scrum to Kanban: Introducing Lean Principles to a Software Engineering Capstone Course

摘要

In this paper, a capstone course in software engineering is described that exposes students to lean principles advocated by Kanban. While retaining the main characteristics of its predecessor course, which concentrated on teaching agile software development using Scrum, the new course also introduces the most important Kanban concepts, i.e., visualization of the workflow and limitation of the work in progress. Kanban concepts are introduced in two ways: in combination with Scrum (as Scrumban) or as a "pure" Kanban (omitting some of the Scrum activities considered waste). Students are required to work in teams responsible for the implementation of a set of user stories defined by a project domain expert playing the role of the Product Owner. During the course, they must maintain a Kanban board and measure lead time. The paper discusses the use of different Kanban boards and work in progress limits, and analyzes the students' progress in reducing lead time. A summary of the lessons learned and recommendations is given reflecting the issues to be considered when teaching similar courses. A survey among students has shown that they liked both approaches and were overwhelmingly positive about the course.