Capability Development through Project Management guided principles. and Agile Values. Abstract

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1 Capability Development through Project Management guided principles and Agile Values Theme: Human Capital for Redefining India Key words: ABET; PMBOK; ACM code of ethics; Agile Abstract IT and ITeS Organizations are investing significant budget and time towards in -house training programs on engineers they hire. Holistic approaches are needed towards capability development among science and engineering graduate; bridge the skill gap to enable them meets the expectations of project teams. In this aspect Industry, academia collaboration plays an important role. The programs like faculty development workshops, summer training programs for the students and faculty on recent trends in project delivery will help the students understand the expectations from the organizations and enable the students better equipped and employable. In this work, we consider four areas of expertize discussed in PMBOK namely, developing knowledge and skill areas like application knowledge, understanding project environment, general project management knowledge and interpersonal skills keeping ABET outcomes of engineering education in mind. Subsequently knowledge, skill areas are identified with expected set of competencies keeping new hires in mind and a framework is proposed integrating the above aspects along with ACM code of ethics and people factors pertaining to software engineering education. The proposed framework is based on expectations from the project managers in our organization (from the new hires) and our experiences based on agile workshop conducted at NITK, India as part of industry academia collaboration initiative. The present paper is organised into various sections namely, introduction, PMBOK guided principles, agile principles and the framework proposed on capability development. The utility and importance of this framework reflects through the holistic approach adopted integrating ethical aspects along with behavioural and technical aspects which can be adopted across various engineering programs. 1. Introduction: There has been significant importance being given in India, towards developing transferable skills. However, there is acute shortage of graduates who are employable to meet the demands of various sectors; India is quite behind in terms of population reach (only 10% of workforce in the country receive some form of skill training) compared to Korea (90%), Japan (80%). Interestingly 2% of the 10% in India is in the form of formal training [1]. Based on the median point, the report highlights that India has challenging opportunity of becoming world s youngest workforce followed by China and other countries in next 20 years. National skill development corporation is aiming at daunting task of skill development of 130 million people in the country out of which a combined community of contract and regular workforce of 85 million and 29 million in Banking and Financial services domain. This clearly highlights importance of capability development opportunity that can be co-created by academia and industry at educational institutions. The on campus recruitment happens based on the basis of the student s attitude; perceived value and the learning ability of the candidates as the organizations expect them develop capabilities swiftly as per the project needs. In addition, multi -disciplinary approach helps in adopting new technologies, developing problem solving and abstract thinking skills. In this context academia 1

2 industry interface helps the students get exposed to the technology landscape and expectations from the organizations. Also the rate at which the number of engineering colleges increasing during past few years is causing serious problems for the organizations towards attracting and retaining proficient faculty and strengthening their skills by providing opportunities to interact with organizations and get insights. Methods of teaching and learning innovations promoting higher order thinking [2, 3] play an important role in skill development among the engineering students and alignment between the organizational expectations and ABET educational objectives [4] plays an important role. Various courses in engineering curriculum can be used to bridge this gap, for example, the case study on software engineering [5]. In this work we propose a framework incorporating PMBOK guided principles and project management aspects in team member perspective, ACM code of ethics [6] and ABET educational learning objectives to address the baselined capabilities that strengthen employability of students across IT, ITeS sectors. 2. Guided principles of PMBOK: There are five common areas of expertise described in PMBOK [7] as guided principles namely, knowledge of project management, Application area knowledge, understanding project environment, general management knowledge and interpersonal skills. Keeping entry level team member in view, we consider four guided principles as detailed knowledge on project management might not be required for such role in an IT organization. The four dimensions described above are further refined in terms of technical and behavioural aspects in subsequent sections. 2.1 Application Area Knowledge Technical elements Application area extensions Product development knowledge Domain knowledge In team member perspective, technical and domain knowledge are important while other two knowledge areas can be learned in the project environment. This is primarily because of the fact that each project environment is different and too divergent to be baselined. Similarly in the following sections various dimensions from PMBOK are considered and details are worked out specific to team member role in a project team. 2.2 Understanding Project Environment Cultural and social environment: Team needs to understand people characteristics of team and as well as stakeholders, thereby, fostering organizational culture and values towards delivering value to the customers International and political involvement: Understanding applicable local laws of the demographics and the code of conduct at client locations Physical environment: Knowledge on time zones and local eco system and related aspects that could potentially affect the delivery of the project Students need exposure and understanding of recent developments and adoption of iterative and incremental delivery models across the industries. In this context proliferation of agile methods across 2

3 the educational institutions where the project assignments can be driven through these methods to enable them realize the complexities involved in the project environment and the create an opportunity for them to develop few skills as mentioned above. In recent past, agile methodologies and project management has been quite prominent in the version one survey [8]. These results also reflect that common reasons for failure of agile projects are attributed to lack of experience with agile methods(11%), lack of cultural transition(9%), poor adoption (7%), in-sufficient training (3%) and new to the approach (3%). It is equally important to impart agile values and develop agile culture among the graduates as some of the new hires get into agile projects as part of their first job. It requires a different mind-set and culture. Hence agile values and principles are considered as part of the framework. 2.3 General Management knowledge Skills: As team member one should be able to understand the tasks assigned to the self and able to provide inputs on estimation of efforts; self -planning in a disciplined way, and accept additional responsibilities towards team collaboration and identifying and maximizing the waste, with in the project Interpersonal Skills: As team member, skills like customer communication, taking up initiatives, problem solving skills in day to day activities are important. These aspects have drawn our attention to consider agile values and principles and we propose agile philosophy as fifth dimension as part of capability development framework for team member level. The expectations from the new hires and the integrated approach leveraging the agile principles and IEEE code of ethics are presented in the following section. 3. Project management and Agile: We have conducted agile workshop in 2013, at National Institute of Technology, Surathkal, as part of recent advances in Software Engineering event [9] witnessed by 50 participants out of which 27 participated in agile workshop integrating Java technology stack and Scrum methodology where the participants have executed 2 sprints comprising estimation, capacity planning, development and retrospectives. 3

4 Ability to understand and use MVC Ability to use coding standards Ability to use Data Access Object pattern Ability to perform static modeling using Ablility to implement design Ability to estimate velocity Ability to be part of sprint Ability to perform work in a team 1 22 Ability to capture business flows and Ability to identify classess and interfaces 1 18 Ability to perform story point estimation Ability to write stories Ablility to understand capturing Can do Can do with help can do with further training will not be able to do Figure 1: Participant reflections on agile workshop These reflections highlight importance of integrating development methods and technology stack as indicated in Figure1, especially indicators: Understanding Model, View and Controller architecture (MVC), UML modelling, sprint and velocity concepts. Also we observed active participation of students and faculty within the teams. Some of the experiences of this workshop are described in section Experiences and Challenges: Skill gap of the participants specific to java coding has slowed down the delivery Participants are from different disciplines and appreciated the treatment on integrating technology and process knowledge. Integrated approach of Java stack with agile practices helped the participants correlate intricacies of design elements while estimation is being done as part of sprint planning meeting. Participants felt that the lab sessions on java programming on web application development is very useful Workshop has provided an opportunity to get an exposure of sprint planning, managing technical debt (as some of them are not having good java coding skils). 4

5 Some of the comments include: I am not aware about agile methods; Now I got better approach and I can teach my students in a much better way Good workshop integrating training concepts and hands on sessions 3.2 Inputs from Project Mangers: We also consider the inputs from the project managers who have participated in a survey in 2010, to find the expectations from new hires with specific reference to science graduates which can potentially useful even in engineering stream as well keeping the roles and responsibilities of these new hires in the organization. There are couple of questions in the survey and with 47 respondents. While designing the survey, we wanted to consider the time and effort of these respondents so that it should not be too cumbersome survey to detail out and on the other hand they should be able to provide vital information in terms of the roles and competencies etc., so that the learning function can structure the entry level program accordingly; Questionnaire has quantitative and qualitative inputs. Question1: What are the various roles played by the associates in the projects? The responses for this question reflect that the top three roles played by the Associates are that of a Developer (76%), Support & Maintenance (38%) and Tester (38%). Question 2: What are the Technical Skills and Knowledge required in performing the roles? In continuation to the roles, knowledge, skill areas and project manager s expectations help in developing outcome based learning programs. Hence for question 2, we have provided various technical elements of technical competency along with its relative importance towards performing tasks in the projects. The options provided include (i) Vital without which the tasks can t be performed, (ii) Essential tasks can be performed with some guidance (iii) desirable the technical debt can be managed as a whole team. These results from Figure 2, reflect importance of adhering coding practices, (61%), coding ability (55%) and code review, code maintenance in general. 5

6 120% 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% 8% 23% 61% 26% 41% 17% 17% 41% 35% 41% 20% 11% 14% 20% 26% 20% 14% 26% 23% 47% 41% 32% 38% 32% 55% 35% 35% 35% 38% 32% 29% 44% 11% 8% 44% 41% 50% 50% 23% 23% 8% 2% 20% 44% 29% Vital Essential Desirable Figure 2: Technical Skills and knowledge required for the roles Question 3: What are the behavioural skills are required to perform the roles? A list of skills that are identified with the help of leadership development team; the corresponding inputs as check box option are captured and presented in Figure Figure 3: Behavioural Skills required for various roles of team member 6

7 The Project managers have rated each of the skills as either Vital (most important), Essential (important) and desirable (good to know) and consolidation of baselined skills is given in table 1 Table 1: Technical and Behavioural skills expected at entry level Vital Essential Desirable Soft skills Installation and Maintenance Networking concepts Setup and maintain user accounts Coding Standard and Documentation Coding Software Engineering Concepts Defectlog consolidation Testing Concepts Data Structure Database Concepts Defective Management Operating Systems Reviews Quality Management services Web Application Concepts Oral and Written Communication Can Do Attitude Logical Thinking Team Player Time Management Keeping the guided principles as part of section 2.2 and the workshop experiences in view we propose agile as fifth dimension as influencing dimensions towards capability development as described in the framework section Capability Development Framework: Agile values and methods enable the students develop capabilities expected as team members in their projects and hence they can be incorporated while executing end semester projects as part of their software engineering education. Figure 4: Capability Development Framework 7

8 4.1 Inculcating Agile culture among the students: Traditionally it is being observed from new hires that during their graduation program, the students are guided through conventional development cycle of requirement refinement, design development, coding, testing and other derivatives like documents. The problems and projects that are being carried out by them are mostly towards quality of the project report; it is quite difficult for the faculty to evaluate the code for a large section of students. The whole process and the experience that students gain in the process is likely to be driven by the facilitator. Instead, agile core values to be inculcated among the students that foster innovation, adopting to change requirements, exploring tools and techniques that bring intrinsic quality to the applications that the students develop. Incorporating agile values as part of the curriculum helps students develop delivery capabilities towards execution of the project when they get an opportunity as a team member. Agile manifesto and associated core values, principles are conceptualised in 2001 [10]. They are the levers for various delivery models that drive iterative and incremental approaches where delivering value faster to the customers is the key. Though the manifesto is developed a decade ago, the values are being considered as foundation for agile methods. There are interesting observations from the surveys conducted in 2010, led to revision and refinement of some of the principles and these details are published in 2012 [11 ] as an outcome of relooking and reframing of erstwhile 12 agile principles in the context of prevailing business environment decade later. These observations reflect upon re-emphasising intrinsic and extrinsic quality of the software using whole team approach that resulted into refined set of 11 principles (deletion of one and rephrasing others). Table 2 describes these refined principles which will be used during subsequent sections of the paper. Table 2: Descriptions of revised Agile principles [11] Principle Description P1 Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. P2 Welcome changing requirements, at the start of each iteration even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer s competitive advantage. P3 Whole team from business people through testers must communicate and collaboratively work together throughout the project P4 Build projects around empowered, motivated individuals with a shared vision of success; Give them the environment and support they need, clear their external obstacles, and trust them to get the job done. P5 The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is through synchronous communication; important decisions are documented so are not forgotten P6 Valuable, high quality Working software is the primary measure of progress at the end of each short time-boxed iteration. P7 Agile processes promote sustainable development. The whole team should be able to maintain a reasonable work pace that includes dedicated time for exploration, visioning, refactoring, obtaining and responding to feedback. P8 Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility P9 Simplicity the art of maximizing the amount of work not done is essential P10 The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams guided by a vision for product release. P11 Each iteration, the team candidly reflects on the success of the project, feedback, and how to be more effective, then tunes and adjusts its plans and behaviour accordingly. A list of capabilities identified and derived based on the skills and knowledge areas described in this section through the survey reports, enumerated as C1, C2..C7. 8

9 Table 3: Derived list of capabilities Capability C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8 C9 Description Ability to understand the problems and breaking down the complexity. Ability to develop quality code. Ability to contribute to the value of the customer Ability to work as team player Ability to understand customer requirements and features to be implemented Ability to learn new technology or framework quickly Ability to develop builds Ability to adhere to schedules Ability to communicate with the customer In this work we investigate the role of agile values and principles on these competencies as organizations are working towards building agile culture. Also this perspective provides an opportunity to the students understand importance of whole team approach, developing negotiation skills, estimating what they can commit, collective code ownership. It is important that students need to embrace to change and ability to be agile embracing change swiftly in terms of adopting to the culture, assimilating the demands form the project team from the individual, customer centricity, proactively anticipating impediments and create value to the stake holders. 4.2 ACM Code of Ethical analysis and competencies: We refer to the list of topics from ACM code of ethics [6 ] and derived capabilities associated with the same and presented in Table 4. Table 4: Descriptions of ethical competencies Ethics Topic Description E1 Quality of Life: New products and solutions and their influence on end users and associated side effects Ability of balancing benefits and side effects (involvement on environmental science) E2 Use of Power The power of computer professionals through their knowledge; Ability of balancing them with the working groups to which they belong to. (Assertive communications) E3 Risks and Reliability Ability to assess the risk of technology being used and associated trade -offs. E4 Property rights Exposure and respect towards patents and copy right laws E5 Privacy Understanding the implications of collecting, storing, creating and sharing the information is important as the professionals design such systems to perform these activities. E6 Equity and access Ability of ethical reasoning on equity and access E7 Honest and deception Ability to evaluate and put forth honest view on benefits and risks associated with technology 9

10 4.3 Educational Learning Objectives and ABET Perspective: ABET educational outcomes are guided indicators for program design and course design integrating suitable teaching and assessment instruments. Table 5 describes the mapping of the indicators pertaining to aspects of project management guided principles and ACM code of ethics in the perspective of various outcomes 3(a) 3(k). Table 5: Alignment of ABET outcomes and derived competencies ABET 3(a) -3(k) Guided principles mapping (Sectional, capability) a) An ability to apply knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering. (2.1, C1) b) An ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data. c) An ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs. (2.1, C7) (2.2, {C2, C8}) d) An ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams. (2.2, {C4, C8}) e) An ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems. (2.3, {C5, C9}) f) An understanding of professional and ethical responsibility. (3.3, {E1, E7}) g) An ability to communicate effectively. C8, C9 h) The broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering Corporate social solutions in a global and societal context. responsibility initiatives i) A recognition of the need for, and an ability to engage in life-long C6 learning. j) A knowledge of contemporary issues. C3 k) An ability to use the techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools necessary for engineering practice. (2.2, {C3, C5}) 10

11 Agile Principles Table 6: Agile principles and indicators of ethical code of conduct and derived competencies Indicators for capability Topics of Ethical Analysis C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8 C9 E1 E2 E3 E4 E5 E6 E7 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 P8 P9 P10 P Curriculum and Teaching methods promoting Capabilities and values: Towards holistic development of the students, we made an attempt to map a set of courses which are being part of graduation (science and engineering) curricula with the baselined competencies and the teaching methods to be used to promote them. These details are given in Table 7. 11

12 Table 7: Recommended courses and teaching methods for Developing competencies and ACM code of ethics among graduates Capability (Ethical value) C1 ( E1, E2 ) C2, C4 C3, C4, C5 (E1, E7) C6 (E3) C7 (E1) Courses (Proposed Pedagogy to impart the ethical Value and competency) ILT: Instructor Led, PBL: Problem Based Learning; PjBL: Project Based Learning Mathematics I (ILT), Data Structures and Programming (PBL); Engineering Physics (PBL) Data Structures and Programming (PBL) Object Oriented Analysis and Design (Case Study Approach), Software Engineering (PjBL) Mathematics I, Discrete Mathematics (ILT, PBL) Theory of computing (ILT), Build tools Maven, Jenkins, version control tools (Project based Collaborative learning) C8, C9 (E7) E4, E5 E6 PBL, PjBL, Software Engineering (PjBL) Intellectual Property Rights (Case study approach) Teaching methods and business cases Some of the courses consist of concepts predominantly of higher order cognition of Bloom s taxonomy [12]. It is important to use suitable teaching and assessment methods [13]. 5. Conclusions and recommendations: In this work we present both academic and industry perspectives on outcome based education along with guided principles of Project Management Body of Knowledge and agile principles. A frame work is proposed for capability development, leveraging these perspectives. Inputs from project managers are used to identify skills and knowledge areas that bridge the gap between the program outcomes and industry expectations. A set of capabilities are derived and investigated on the influence of agile principles fostering ethical learning environment. Observations from various indicators across Tables 5, 6, 7 are given below. Table 5: Item on Corporate social responsibility is not being reflected naturally as competency and it is attributed as a practice across organizations. Table 6: It can be noticed that items E1, E4 are not naturally influenced indicators through agile principles and these can be practiced through agile methods for example, E1 (Quality of life) has influence in story point estimation, progressive elaboration and adopting change requirements; E4 (property rights) can be adherence to practices of the customers and compliance to third party licences while working with open source technologies. Table 7: Few courses are identified as vital and provide guidance towards exploring suitable teaching and assessment approaches for active engagement of the students through collaborative learning. These inputs also highlight ways of using interdisciplinary approach in engineering education to 12

13 promote holistic learning. The details on pedagogical aspects and associated activities are beyond the scope of this paper and can be found elsewhere in the literature and some of the references given in section 6. The approach and the elements considered in the present framework can be adopted across other sectors like automobile and manufacturing etc towards capability development in large scale. 6. References [1] Knowledge paper on skill development in India, available at: eport_2012_finalversion_low_resolution.pdf; NDSC:National Skill development Corporation, Human and skill requirements in the IT & ITES industry sector (2022) A report.conducted by ICRA Management Consulting services. Available onlineat: [2] Karl A. Smith, Sheri D. Sheppard, David W. Johnson, and Roger T. Johnson, Pedagogies of Engagement: Classroom Based Practices, J. of Engg Education, 2005, pp [3] Madhuri G. V., Kantamreddi V. V. S. and Prakash Goteti, L. N. S., Promoting Higher Order Thinking Learning, European J. Engg. Education, February, 2012, DOI: / [4]Richard M. Felder, Rebecca Brent, The ABC s of Engineering Education: ABET, Bloom s Taxonomy, Cooperative Learning and so on, Proceedings of 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition, session 1375, [5] Saradhi. S., Prakash Goteti, L.N.S., Bridging the gap between ABET outcomes and industry expectations A case study on software engineering course IEEE International Conference on MOOC, Innovation and Technology In Education, MITE 2014, 2014, pp ; DOI: /MITE [6] Chuck Huff and Almut Furchert, Computing Ethics: Towards a Pedagogy of Ethical Practice,Comm. Of ACM, 57, 2014, pp ; Also, Chuck Huff and C. Dainne Martin, Computing Consequences: A framework for Teaching Ethical Computing, Comm. Of ACM, 38, 1995, pp [7] PMI Global Standard, "A guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge", ANSI PMI , pp [8] [9] Short term training program on Recent Advances in Software Engineering (RAISE), 10 th 14 th June,2013; [10] Available at: [11] Laurie Williams, What Agile Teams Think of Agile Principles, Communications of ACM, 55, 4, 2012, pp

14 [12] L. W. Anderson, D.R. Krathwohl, P.W. Airasian, K..A. Cruikshank, R. E. Mayer, P. R. Pintrich, J. Raths and M. C. Wittrock, A taxnomony for learning and teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom s taxonomy of educational objectives, Longman, Inc: AW, [13] Ch. U, Goteti L. N. S. Prakash, Imparting Technical Skills Through Outcome Based Curriculum and Case study assessments IEEE International Conference on MOOC, Innovation and Technology In Education, MITE 2013, pp ; /MITE