Abstract Agile coaches play a key role in supporting software teams and organisations during agile transformations, yet little is known about how they understand and design for the continuation of agility after their involvement ends. This study fills that research gap by examining how agile coaches perceive post-exit outcomes and describing the strategies they use to support endurance beyond their engagement. Drawing on sixteen semi-structured interviews with professional agile coaches across multiple organisations, we identify six interconnected themes that capture coaches’ accounts of embedding routines, transferring ownership, and aligning agile values with organisational contexts. We synthesise these themes into the concept of sustainment work, referring to the professional and organisational efforts that coaches describe undertaking to support the continuation of agile ways of working beyond their direct involvement. This synthesis is represented in an empirically derived model comprising three interrelated domains: Embedding Practices, Enabling Ownership, and Aligning Culture. The model reflects how coaches conceptualise the relationship between their interventions, anticipated post-exit trajectories, and the endurance of agile practices, rather than providing evidence of long-term organisational outcomes. The paper contributes theoretically grounded insights into how agility is understood and approached by highlighting coaches’ perceptions and intended sustainment strategies, as an ongoing organisational concern rather than a time-bound coaching intervention.

The software engineering graduate apprenticeship program at the School of Computing, University of Glasgow, has a significant emphasis on work-based learning (WBL), with approximately 80% of the students' time over four years spent in the workplace. This work-based aspect of the program plays a more prominent role in the final two years, by which time apprentices are undertaking increasingly larger roles in the workplace. In this report, we present how we addressed the challenge of structuring and assessing WBL in these senior years such that there is a balance between professional competency attainment and ranked academic achievement, while providing a fair and flexible structure. Based on a model of WBL presented by Raelin in 1997, we outline our rationale for dividing the assessments into workplace projects, workplace journal, and a portfolio of artefacts. The projects are categorised into different types both for flexibility and to encourage academia-industry collaboration, the workplace journal encourages higher forms of reflection, while the portfolio assessment encourages and assesses the attainment of professional competencies. We present our experience of implementing this structure, an analysis of student feedback, and the adjustments made in response. With an increasing focus on work-ready skills and competency-based education in software engineering education, we expect the theory-informed structure we developed, and our experience of running and adapting it, to serve as an exemplar for developing a WBL program at research-led institutions.

Over more than two decades, The University of Glasgow has co-designed and delivered numerous software engineering focused courses with industry partners, covering both technical and discipline specific professional skills. Such collaborations are not unique and many of the benefits are well recognised in the literature. These include enhancing the real-world relevance of curricula, developing student professional networks ahead of graduation and easing recruitment opportunities for employers. However, there is relatively little scholarship on the perspectives of industry practitioners who participate in course design and delivery. This gap is significant, since the effort invested by practitioners is often substantial and may require ongoing support from both the industry partner and academic institution. Understanding the motivations, expectations and experiences of practitioners who engage in course delivery can guide the formation of future partnerships and ensure their long-term sustainability. We begin to address this gap by reporting on the outcomes of a retrospective conducted amongst the practitioner coauthors of this paper, with the academic coauthors acting as facilitators. All coauthors have participated in the recent co-design and delivery of software engineering courses, but we choose to focus explicitly on the perspectives of the practitioners. We report on the themes that emerged from the discussions and our resulting recommendations for future collaborations.

Abstract Agile coaching has emerged as a key enabler of agile adoption and organisational transformation. Despite its growing prevalence, there has not been much research into agile coaching, and there is a need for a better understanding of the current state of research and where the gaps lie. To fill this gap, we present a systematic mapping study (SMS) of agile coaching to identify and categorise existing research. An initial search identified 497 studies, of which 22 primary studies were selected based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. We provide a thematic analysis of the included papers and a summary of challenges and benefits associated with agile coaching. Key findings indicate a steady rate of research studies since 2013, predominantly from Europe. The most extensively researched areas are coaches’ skills, roles, and responsibilities. However, there is a noticeable lack of research depth in other areas and an absence of theory in all papers. Finally, we propose a roadmap for further research, highlighting unexplored aspects of agile coaching, including its impact across diverse organisational contexts. These findings provide a foundation for future research and offer practical insights for practitioners and researchers in the agile domain.

This Practice Work-in-Progress paper presents a work-based undergraduate degree program in Software Engineering, designed in consultation with industry. Work-based learning is often seen as a means of ensuring university graduates are equipped with the skills and knowledge required to succeed in the workplace. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which the program has prepared students for working in industry. To this end, the students were surveyed after they had completed their first semester, and returned to their workplace for two months. Qualitative analysis of survey data revealed the aspects of their first year courses that apprentices valued most in the workplace. These aspects included exposure to multiple programming languages and existing codebases, as well as knowledge of Software Engineering tools and practices. Underpinning many of the students’ responses, however, was the increased confidence that their university instruction afforded them in the workplace.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in widespread changes to how the higher education sector operates. In this paper, the experience of delivering an eight-week undergraduate Software Engineering programme during the pandemic is discussed. The programme in question exhibits a number of unique features, including the intensive nature of the teaching, and the timing of its delivery, which coincided almost exactly with the introduction of lockdown measures. Reflections are offered on the rapid transition to online delivery of three different modules, including consideration of students' wellbeing. The implications for Software Engineering education, and online education more broadly, are considered.

No abstract available.

Work-based learning (WBL) is a delivery model that attempts to address the isolation of theory and practice by integrating them into a single programme. The concern is that through lack of experience and understanding, both universities and industry may devise 'Frankenstein' curricula, harming individuals rather than helping them. This poster introduces a small project to support curricula development by proposing universities act as both the learning provider and workplace for apprentice Research Software Engineers (RSEs).