Agile Metrics for a University Software Engineering Course

TL;DR

This paper introduces a set of metrics to evaluate adherence to agile practices in university software engineering courses, aiming to improve assessment and understanding of student engagement with agile methods.

Contribution

It proposes novel metrics for measuring agile process compliance in student projects, addressing a gap in university course assessment methods.

Findings

Metrics successfully identified process violations in student projects

Metrics provided insights for team discussions and process improvements

Application of metrics over five years improved course evaluation

Abstract

Teaching agile software development by pairing lectures with hands-on projects has become the norm. This approach poses the problem of grading and evaluating practical project work as well as process conformance during development. Yet, few best practices exist for measuring the success of students in implementing agile practices. Most university courses rely on observations during the course or final oral exams. In this paper, we propose a set of metrics which give insights into the adherence to agile practices in teams. The metrics identify instances in development data, e.g. commits or user stories, where agile processes were not followed. The identified violations can serve as starting points for further investigation and team discussions. With contextual knowledge of the violation, the executed process or the metric itself can be refined. The metrics reflect our experiences with running a software engineering course over the last five years. They measure aspects which students frequently have issues with and that diminish process adoption and student engagement. We present the proposed metrics, which were tested in the latest course installment, alongside tutoring, lectures, and oral exams.