A Blueprint for Adopting Agility in Teaching, Research and Service in an Engineering Department

This innovate-practice, work in progress paper presents a blueprint on the adoption of agile process in an academic engineering department. The blueprint offered in this paper can be used by engineering departments to introduce an agile approach in their teaching, research, and service activities. This paper provides a framework for using Scrum as it has been implemented in the EECS department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. For each of the common facets of academia, i.e., teaching, research, and service, we report on our experiences, lessons learned, and proposed approaches in adopting Scrum. Furthermore, we highlight the value added by integrating this Scrum approach, such as the increased marketability of students with agile experience, a greater accountability from students and faculty, and/or building a much stronger communities between faculty, and between faculty and students. We also discuss possible obstacles and required mitigations to facilitate adoption. Results of adopting agility in all three facets of the academic department will be reported, including how it benefits computing and engineering education and the academic department.