Course syllabus

Welcome to DAT257/DIT257 Agile Software Project Management LP4 VT26 (7.5 hp)

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

This course aims to give you an introduction to Agile Development Methodologies. You will work on an open problem that is related to the United Nations Sustainability Goals. By iterative planning and evaluating your work, you organize yourself 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 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 to provide value to a stakeholder based on the student's own learning strategies. 

Learning outcomes 

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

With 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 to the project in collaboration with the other team members, including the use of generative AI
• 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 their own and the team's learning strategies
• Optional: reflect on the usage of generative AI in software development project

Contact details

Course Responsible and Examiner:
Irum Inayat, Senior Lecturer, Interaction Design and Software Engineering
(irum@chalmers.se)

Co-Lecturers:

Vladislav Indykov (PhD Student) (indykov@chalmers.se)

Teaching Assistants:

To be announced 

Course Representatives:
To be announced 

Project: This is the core of this course: In a team of 5-7 students, you will develop software that solves a real-world problem related to the Sustainability Goals of the UN. The document explaining the whole project can be found here. 

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. Weekly supervision is an integral part of the course design, and the students and the teaching staff together make sense of the learning objectives concerning the students' experience. Students will submit weekly reflections as a team and individually after each iteration, followed by a demonstration session of the developed module(s) with their respective TAs.

Replacement: If you won't be able to participate in the Scrum Exercise to be held on 1st April 2026 due to a valid reason, which you will inform me (irum@chalmers.se) at the start of the course, you should do the replacement assignment. 

Unless stated otherwise, all lectures and exercises will be on campus. However, in agreement with the TA, the group supervision can be conducted remotely.

Details of the schedule can be seen here: Timeedit

Please follow canvas and timeedit for any runtime change in venue (which is highly unlikely but in case it happens)

Course structure

Assignments Overview

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

• Assignment A: Participation in exercise [it is determined by your presence in the SCRUM exercise and will be done by the Teachers only]
• Assignment A: Replacement Assignment [only for those who missed the SCRUM exercise]
• Assignment B: Team setup and social contact. 
• Assignment C: Project scope description.
• Assignment D: Setup of Git repository and Kanban board.
• Assignment F: Group weekly sprint reflections.
• Assignment G: Individual weekly reflections 
• Assignment H: Investor pitch video.
• Assignment I: Podcast
• Assignment K: Final Report 

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.