Abstract

Agile, as a way of working and a mindset (PMI 2022), has many benefits – such as improved team performance, quicker responses to fluctuating market dynamics and enhanced alignment with business objectives – across various business functions within organizations in a diverse range of industries (Meier and Kock 2021; Rigby et al. 2016). With widespread agile initiatives in organizations, it is imperative for business graduates to understand and appreciate agile principles and practices (Scrum Alliance and the Business Agility Institute 2023), even if they will not take on agile-specific roles, such as Scrum master or agile coach, in the future. At present, many business students do not take a course dedicated to agile methods or one that can afford to spend a few weeks on agile-related topics. With a goal to introduce agile to these students, or students who need some foundational knowledge before they take more advanced agile courses, this TREO talk describes the design and implementation of a one-week module to introduce agile concepts and two very popular agile frameworks (Kanban and Scrum), as well as their application in business settings, to business students. In our talk, we will describe three phases of work we completed, as well as future plans. First, we conducted a literature review summarizing industry reports on the benefits of agile in organizations and the agile concepts and skills that business graduates need to know. We also summarized a dozen pedagogical studies that introduce agile concepts in information systems (IS) or business courses of varied duration. Second, we implemented a one-week module in an existing Project Management course, comprising a 75-minute introductory lecture on agile concepts, followed by an assignment utilizing an online course explaining agile and Jira, a widely used project management software. The Jira course is hosted by Atlassian, Jira’s software vendor. Third, we collected preliminary data from discussion posts from 16 graduate (MBA and MS) students as a pilot study and analyzed them qualitatively to generate insights regarding how this module helped them to develop an agile mindset. In addition to the three phases above, our TREO talk will also present our plan to collect new types of data to measure the effectiveness of this one-week module, as well as evidence of student learning outcomes and how this module can prepare them to participate in business projects using agile approaches. Our study will demonstrate that business students from many majors – not just IS students – can benefit from learning about agile concepts and develop an agile mindset that will allow them to participate or manage projects in organizations more effectively.

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