Integrating agile practices into software engineering courses

Agile software development methodologies claim to be superior for adapting to the changing needs of customers and projects and to the people on the team. As a result, these methodologies are steadily gaining interest and popularity in industry. Some examples of agile methodologies are Extreme Programming, Feature-Driven Development, Scrum, and Win-Win Spiral. Each of these processes comprises a set of practices, some of which are currently considered best practices and are consistent with what is taught in software engineering courses today. Other practices, however, are controversial and run contrary, to the focus of most curricular materials. As educators, we must assess the academic and technical values of emerging technologies and, if convinced of their worthiness, we owe it to our students to integrate them into our curricula.