Course syllabus

Welcome to DAT257/DIT257 Agile Software Project Management LP4 VT24 (7.5 hp)

This is a practical project course, so you will apply agile methods to develop a software project in a small group.

The aim of this course is to give you an introduction into Agile Development Methodologies. You will work on an open problem that is related to the United Nation Sustainability Goals. By iteratively planning and evaluating your work, you organise themselves in order to reach a joint goal with limited resources. To do this, you apply an agile software development process to structure your work. You will reflect on your own work and learning every week to enable a continuous improvement of your way of working. At the same time, you acquire skills and knowledge in new technologies, tools, and fitting ways to use them in order to provide value to a stakeholder based on the students' own learning strategies. This will include the use of generative AI for code development and report writing.

Learning outcomes 

After completion of this course the student should possess the following understanding, skills, abilities and judgement:

Knowledge and understanding, the student should:

• describe software engineering as an engineering discipline by using relevant terminology
• describe the relationship between stakeholder, product, and process

Skills and abilities, the student should: 

• specify, implement, and evaluate a system based on what different stakeholders perceive as valuable
• learn tools and APIs which are relevant for the project in collaboration with the other team members, including the use of generative AI (optional)
• apply a structured software development process as a member of a team

Judgement and approach, the student should: 

• reflect on how the process was applied in a project
• reflect on the own and the team's learning strategies
• Optional: reflect on the usage of generative AI in software development project

Contact details

Examiner:
Hans-Martin Heyn (heyn@chalmers.se)

Lecturers:
Sofia Gunnarsson <sofgun@chalmers.se>
Vladislav Indykov <indykov@chalmers.se>

Teaching Assistants:

Schedule

The rooms and schedule can be found on TimeEdit.
Note 2024-02-27: I have been informed about a change in the timetable. Please check for possible collisions. If a timetable collision occurred, contact me (heyn@chalmers.se) immediately.

Organisation

This course is offered to students from the University of Gothenburg and from Chalmers. The course homepage is located in Canvas.

Lectures: The lectures will provide you with a general overview and knowledge about Agile Methods for Project Management.

Exercise: We will have one exercise to practise Scrum in a practical setting. Sign-up for the group exercise here by choosing one of the exercise sessions.

Project: This is the core of this course: In a team of 6-8 students, you will develop a software that solves a real-world(tm) problem related to the Sustainability Goals of the UN.

The teams have weekly supervision meetings. The project is supplemented by exercises and lectures that provide insight into the assignment students are working on and software engineering in general. The weekly supervision is an integral part of the course design in which the students and the teaching staff together make sense of the learning objectives in relation to the experiences of the students. 

All lectures and exercises will be at campus unless stated here. The group supervision can, in agreement with the TA, be conducted remotely.

Course structure

Assignments Overview

All assignment can be found here. The course consists of the following assignments: 

• Assignment A: Participation in exercise.
• Assignment B: Team setup and social contact.
• Assignment C: Participation in course surveys.
• Assignment D: Project scope description.
• Assignment E: Setup of git repository and Kanban board.
• Assignment F: Minimum viable product.
• Assignment G: Group weekly sprint reflections.
• Assignment H: Individual weekly reflections.
• Assignment I: Investor pitch video.
• Assignment J: Final report
• Assignment K: Peer assessment

All assignments must be passed in order to pass the course.

Course literature

Initial course literature for each topic can be found in the respective Modules.

Changes from previous instance (VT23, LP4):

• Updated lecture material: more scientific references added through additional reading material for most lecture.
• Updated lecture material: added lecture on the use of ChatGPT in agile software development.
• Updated scrum exercise: added a "multi-team" component in which not each team works by itself, but instead all teams work torwards a common goal (building of one large Lego Space Station).
• Updated project scope: The number of Sprints was reduced from 6 to 5 to give students more time for defining the project scope and preparing the pitch videos at the end of the course.
• Updated project assignments: Each week, the group review contains a "special focus" section in which the students will reflect on different aspects of agile software project management.
• Course organisation: A clear list of assignment has been created, divided into "individual assignments", and "group assignments". "Flexible" deadlines allow the students to decide themselves if they want to hand-in assignments on Friday afternoon (preferred), or late on Sunday evening.