A fleet of emerging agile methods of software development (with eXtreme Programming and Scrum being the most broadly used) is both gaining popularity and generating lots of controversy. This high-level tutorial gives an overview of agile methods and provides background to understand how agile teams are trying to address modern software development challenges. Analysis of initial empirical evidence is used to discuss strengths and limitations of agile methods in various contexts. The participants are introduced to the innovation diffusion models and environments, and discuss what is needed for agile methods to cross the chasm and move into the mainstream of software development.

Critiques of the quantity and quality of empirical evaluations in software engineering have existed for quite some time. However such critiques are typically not empirically evaluated. This paper fills this gap by empirically analyzing papers published by ICSE, the prime research conference on Software Engineering. We present quantitative and qualitative results of a quasi-random experiment of empirical evaluations over the lifetime of the conference. Our quantitative results show the quantity of empirical evaluation has increased over 29 ICSE proceedings but we still have room to improve the soundness of empirical evaluations in ICSE proceedings. Our qualitative results point to specific areas of improvement in empirical evaluations.

A fleet of emerging agile methods is both gaining popularity and generating lots of controversy. Real-world examples argue for (e.g. Highsmith and Cockburn, 2001) and against (e.g. Rakitin, 2001) agile methods. Several leading software engineering experts suggest that synthesizing the two, agile with traditional, may provide developers with a comprehensive spectrum of methods (e.g. Boehm, 2002 and 2004 and Humphrey, 2005). This high-level overview tutorial provides background to understand how agile teams are trying to solve modern software development issues.

Research was conducted on using agile methods in software engineering education. This paper explores the perceptions of students from five different academic levels of agile practices. Information has been gathered through the collection of quantitative and qualitative data over three academic years, and analysis reveals student experiences, mainly positive but also some negative. Student opinions indicate the preference to continue to use agile practices at the workplace if allowed. A way these findings may potentially be extrapolated to the industrial settings is discussed. Finally, this report should encourage other academics considering adoption of agile methods in their computer science or software engineering curricula.