Investigating the Benefits of Introducing Process-Oriented Life Cycle Development Models to Improve Students Appreciation for Agile Methods

In this paper, we explore the benefits of teaching heavyweight process life cycle models to young software engineering students to better prepare them in the use of agile methods. The benefits of agile methods compared to process-heavy models include the ability to respond faster to the changing needs of customers and the short feedback loop between customers and developers. Since agile methods depend significantly on the competence of the individual, teaching traditional approaches (e.g. waterfall) can be advantageous to the understanding of students about what the major activities associated with software development are, by providing a well-defined structure that naturally aligns with the novice student. Towards this goal, we conducted a survey with different types of software engineers, ranging from novice undergraduates to software engineering professionals. The survey provides data on the exposure of traditional and agile process, the level of experience in using traditional and agile process models, and the perceived most optimal learning sequence. Based on the analysis of the collected data, we argue that teaching traditional software engineering process-oriented approaches prior to introducing agile methods, is highly beneficial to students’ understanding and optimal use of agile techniques.