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Social skills are essential for a successful understanding of agile methods in software development. Several studies highlight the opportunities and advantages of integrating real-world projects and problems while collaborating with companies into higher education using agile methods. This integration comes with several opportunities and advantages for both the students and the company. The students are able to interact with real-world software development teams, analyze and understand their challenges and identify possible measures to tackle them. However, the integration of real-world problems and companies is complex and may come with a high effort in terms of coordination and preparation of the course. The challenges related to the interaction and communication with students are increased by virtual distance teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic as direct contact with students is missing. Also, we do not know how problem-based learning in virtual distance teaching is valued by the students. This paper presents our adapted eduScrum approach and learning outcome of integrating experiments with real-world software development teams from two companies into a Master of Science course organized in virtual distance teaching. The evaluation shows that students value analyzing real-world problems using agile methods. They highlight the interaction with real-world software development teams. Also, the students appreciate the organization of the course using an iterative approach with eduScrum. Based on our findings, we present four recommendations for the integration of agile methods and real world problems into higher education in virtual distance teaching settings. The results of our paper contribute to the practitioner and researcher/lecturer community, as we provide valuable insights how to fill the gap between practice and higher education in virtual distance settings.
Context: Agile software development (ASD) sets social aspects like communication and collaboration in focus. Thus, one may assume that the specific work organization of companies impacts the work of ASD teams. A major change in work organization is the switch to a 4-day work week, which some companies investigated in experiments. Also, recent studies show that ASD teams are affected by the switch to remote work since the Covid 19 pandemic outbreak in 2020.
Objective: Our study presents empirical findings on the effects on ASD teams operating remote in a 4-day work week organization. Method: We performed a qualitative single case study and conducted seven semi-structured interviews, observed 14 agile practices and screened eight project documents and protocols of agile practices.
Results: We found, that the teams adapted the agile method in use due to the change to a 4-day work week environment and the switch to remote work. The productivity of the two ASD teams did not decrease. Although the stress level of the ASD team member increased due to the 4-day work week, we found that the job satisfaction of the individual ASD team members is affected positively. Finally, we point to affects on social facets of the ASD teams.
Conclusion: The research community benefits from our results as the current state of research dealing with the effects of a 4-day work week on ASD teams is limited. Also, our findings provide several practical implications for ASD teams working remote in a 4-day work week.