Agile in School
I have recently been taking some graduate classes in the field of Information Technology Management. After the first few core classes, I have come to the conclusion that there are WAY too many higher education institutions that are avoiding Agile methodologies when they begin teaching software development practices.
To give some background on where I'm coming from, the program that I had started included a class on project management. The semester had a week or two going into detail about the standard software development life cycle (SDLC). The way they described it was exactly the way waterfall works. All work was done in phases, requirements, design, development, test, deployment, all of which revolves around mountains of documentation and paperwork.
Seeing as I have been working on an Agile based project for over 3 years, I thought I would inject some of my thoughts for the class on how things could be better. I couldn't believe how much negativity I got from other students and even the professor. I was told numerous times how the Agile methodologies (in general, not specific implementations) wouldn't work for large projects and is only good for prototyping functionality. The professor even made the comment that Agile was too restrictive when it comes to the time constraints (this I had a good laugh at).
To make matters worse, if I was to continue the program, the last 5 classes are all different steps in the waterfall process. There is a class on Requirements, there is a class on Design, etc., all leading up to a final course that puts it all together. I don't see a problem with teaching students different ways to gather requirements or how to go about thinking about and designing a system. What I do have a problem with is that these higher education institutions are still forcing a specific system down the throats of students when they should be training the students on how to be most effective in their jobs and provide them with as many tools to accomplish that goal.
Agile isn't just a new fad, it has been around for quite a while now and has taken some of the best practices from years of experience and made those the focus. Furthering oneself through education should benefit the student not waste their time. My hope is that one day there will be a reform in the software development education programs so that new software development managers will have the necessary tools to be effective rather than being restricted out of the gate. If there isn't some change soon, the industry is going to pass the education system by and getting a masters isn't going to do anyone any good.
To give some background on where I'm coming from, the program that I had started included a class on project management. The semester had a week or two going into detail about the standard software development life cycle (SDLC). The way they described it was exactly the way waterfall works. All work was done in phases, requirements, design, development, test, deployment, all of which revolves around mountains of documentation and paperwork.
Seeing as I have been working on an Agile based project for over 3 years, I thought I would inject some of my thoughts for the class on how things could be better. I couldn't believe how much negativity I got from other students and even the professor. I was told numerous times how the Agile methodologies (in general, not specific implementations) wouldn't work for large projects and is only good for prototyping functionality. The professor even made the comment that Agile was too restrictive when it comes to the time constraints (this I had a good laugh at).
To make matters worse, if I was to continue the program, the last 5 classes are all different steps in the waterfall process. There is a class on Requirements, there is a class on Design, etc., all leading up to a final course that puts it all together. I don't see a problem with teaching students different ways to gather requirements or how to go about thinking about and designing a system. What I do have a problem with is that these higher education institutions are still forcing a specific system down the throats of students when they should be training the students on how to be most effective in their jobs and provide them with as many tools to accomplish that goal.
Agile isn't just a new fad, it has been around for quite a while now and has taken some of the best practices from years of experience and made those the focus. Furthering oneself through education should benefit the student not waste their time. My hope is that one day there will be a reform in the software development education programs so that new software development managers will have the necessary tools to be effective rather than being restricted out of the gate. If there isn't some change soon, the industry is going to pass the education system by and getting a masters isn't going to do anyone any good.
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Interesting observation. Looks like you dropped out from this course then or are you still taking it with a bitter pill.
I have completed all of the courses that I started which amounts to about 1/3 of the entire program. I did get more and more irritated through each course at all of my real-world thoughts and ideas getting shot down. I am still in the debating phase of completing the program or finding something else.