Adapting Extreme Programming for a Core Software Engineering Course

Over a decade ago, the manufacturing industry determined it needed to be more agile to thrive and prosper in a changing, nonlinear, uncertain and unpredictable business environment. Recently, the software engineering community has come to the same realization. A group of software methodologists has created a set of software development processes, termed agile methodologies that have been specifically designed to respond to the demands of the turbulent software industry. Each of the processes in the set of agile processes is comprised of a set of practices. As educators, we must assess the emerging agile practices, integrate them into our courses (carefully), and share our experiences and results from doing so. This paper discusses the use of Extreme Programming, a popular agile methodology, in a senior Software Engineering course at North Carolina State University. It then provides recommendations for integrating agile principles into a core Software Engineering course.