A Short Overview of the AMOS Lab Course
The AMOS lab course (Praktikum) is our main class to teach agile methods using Scrum (for process practices) and XP (for technical practices). We aim to make this as real as possible an experience, so students are grouped into (sometimes large) teams and are developing one piece of software during the semester. Typically, it is a web service or an app. Students learn the product management side (release planning, iteration planning, review and release) as well as the development side (effort estimation, test-driven development, etc.) of software engineering processes. Best of all, it is all public! You can get an idea by looking at the following documents:
- Schedule (over the years): http://goo.gl/BZpU8
- Team allocations (2012): http://goo.gl/wDUm0
- Example product planning: http://goo.gl/FRfym
- From the trenches: Communications and impressions
Every week,
- there is a lecture introducing the main topics. Generic versions of the lectures are available publicly and have been taught around the world already, and
- students finish the prior week-long sprint (Scrum’s iteration) with a review and release and plan the next sprint, letting them experience a steady development and delivery rhythm.
To give you an idea of how serious and tangible the output is, take a look at the prior AMOS projects, which are
- AMOS 2010: Mydosis
- AMOS 2011: Free Seas Ahoy!
Mydosis received its first round of funding and FSA!, the younger sibling, is on its heels.
We are always interested in industry collaborations, so if you’d like the lab course to explore one of your ideas, please let us know. You might find yourself in a customer role for the course, talking to students eager to learn from you and to develop some great piece of software!