Various Shades of Teaching Agile

Necmettin Ozkan

1,3 a

, Sevval Bal

and Mehmet Şahin Gök

R&D and Coordination Department, Architecht Information Systems, Istanbul, Turkey

Information Systems Engineering Department, Sakarya University, Sakarya, Turkey

Department of Business, Gebze Technical University, Kocaeli, Turkey

Keywords: Curriculum, Lecture, Education, University, Higher Education, Students, Agility, Scrum, Kanban.

Abstract: In parallel with the increasing demands for Agile in industry and academia, many lecturers have started

teaching Agile Software Development in various programs. Teaching Agile at universities has both

constraints, challenges and opportunities faced by both students and lecturers. Agile courses have been taught

at universities by using different approaches that can mainly be divided into two categories: Teaching Agile

in an agile way and teaching Agile in a conventional way. As the name calls for it, Agile should be taught in

an agile way which is a challenging and still developing subject. Despite significance of Agile and Agile

teaching, there is a lack of theoretical and comprehensive studies on Agile teaching and learning in an agile

way. The existing literature seems to be more focused on practical and limited contexts as "case studies". In

this study, we recommend and present various and agile ways to teach Agile by providing decision-tree-like

paths with their reasonings for a course design. We aim to enlighten educators who are interested in teaching

Agile within a higher education course while designing their courses.

1 INTRODUCTION

The penetration of Agile methods to varying domains

including professional software development and

various organization scales has been increasing. The

increasing demand for Agile development in industry

and academia has reinforced the need for teaching

and learning agile approaches starting from university

courses to get students ready in advance for their

professional lives. Consequently, many lecturers

have started teaching Agile Software Development in

various programs (Hazzan, and Dubinsky, 2007).

Some others prefer replacing traditional teaching

methods with agile approaches while teaching

various subjects such as construction, logistics,

chemistry, and so on. They choose this because of the

similarity and convergence between contemporary

teaching techniques and agile principles. Generation

Z is not satisfied with the traditional teaching

techniques as they think that they “push” predefined

content into their minds by a “holder of knowledge”.

They would rather prefer more interactive, mutual,

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dynamic, enjoyable, and pull-based versions of

teaching that allow students to discover and develop

their unique learning journey shaped based on their

own needs. The students want to go beyond solely

being in the role of absorber and to become active

players in their classes. Parallel to this need, self-

directed and project-based learning, problem-solving,

teamwork, interpersonal and social skills, and

leadership are becoming more crucial in teaching

(Ozkan et. al, 2022). It is not surprising to see that

such and similar contemporary methods are common

among agile principles.

Consequently, agile approaches and techniques

are being used in the modern education context more

and more (Otero et al., 2020), and teaching Agile

product/application/project/software development at

university level has started to become more popular

(Kropp and Meier, 2013). Many researchers have

started to share their experiences of teaching Agile

(Masood, 2018). Despite the positive picture and

numerous benefits of Agile in education (Masood et.

al, 2018), agile approaches in education are still

underused (Otero et al., 2020).

Ozkan, N., Bal, S. and Gök, M.

Various Shades of Teaching Agile.

DOI: 10.5220/0011997000003464

In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE 2023), pages 709-717

ISBN: 978-989-758-647-7; ISSN: 2184-4895

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

709

Agile in education can mainly be categorized into

two different branches; (1) Agile techniques can be

used to teach various domains such as software

development, construction, logistics, chemistry, and

so on. (2) Lectures can focus on teaching the Agile

approaches including the fundamentals, values,

principles, practices, and tools either in an agile way

or not. There are no unified but varying methods for

teaching Agile (Matthies, Kowark, and Uflacker,

2016). Then, we can mainly divide teaching the Agile

approaches into two sub-categories: (2.1) Teaching

Agile in an agile way and (2.2) Teaching Agile in a

conventional way.

Agile Software Development courses have been

taught at universities by using different approaches

including mixing traditional lecturing approaches

with laboratories, reading literature on Agile,

incorporating games, workshops, and interactive

exercises in courses (Masood et. al, 2018; Werner,

2012) and in conventional ways such as learning from

textbooks even though the students today may not

prefer it. As the name calls for, Agile should be taught

in an agile way (Devedzic and Milenkovic, 2011)

which is a challenging and still developing matter.

The challenges faced in professional software

development projects with the Agile approaches are

also found in the domain of student learning.

Teaching Agile at universities also involves various

unique challenges and constraints such as adaptations

to fit the context of education (Masood et. al, 2018).

Complexity (introduction of entirely new concepts),

under-defined problems (participants are not familiar

with problem space), time-boxed development with

frequent team meetings, and inevitable change

(applying new knowledge) are among others

(Mahnic, 2015). In addition, the short time-frames

within semesters and regular lectures, the availability

of external stakeholders (Schneider et. al, 2020),

providing a realistic environment within the nature of

academia, limited availability and commitment of

information technology professionals (Linos et. al

2020) force the students and lecturers to find

innovative and proper solutions to these challenges.

Teaching Agile can also have unique advantages

for practitioners. The course taught for longer period

of time, during one semester, can have more

advantages over the short-term teaching in the sector

in terms of affecting and penetrating the learners

more deeply and properly. Additionally, teaching at

universities can provide openness to trying different

methods and learning cycle experiments. It is more

possible that the students can have a purer and more

meaningful aim than practitioners while learning

Agile. Students can also have a more homogeneous

level of knowledge at the initial stage of the courses;

thus, their learning progress can be seen more clearly.

In this regard, the students in the context of a

particular university and students in the context of

another university can resemble each other and the

rate of transition from one context to another can be

high. This case may pave the way for the practitioners

in the field of education to make use of other

practitioners’ experiences.

Despite such significance and impact, there is a

lack of theoretical and comprehensive studies on

Agile teaching and learning. The existing literature

seems to be more focused on practical and limited

contexts as "case studies". In this study, we

recommend and present varying teaching Agile ways

by providing decision-tree-like paths in Figure 1 with

their reasonings for a course design to enlighten

educators who are interested in teaching Agile within

a higher education course. In providing the

recommendations, we will focus from time to time on

possible constraints and opportunities faced by both

students and lecturers.

2 THE COURSE DESIGN

In this section, we will cover possible and prominent

manners related to the design of teaching Agile

lectures. The possible options are not limited to the

ones presented here, and those expressed in this paper

do not aim to draw a line between the right and wrong

approaches. It only aims to inspire and convey

relevant and valuable knowledge to the people who

teach such courses.

2.1 Principles

Madhuri and Goteti (2018) state that knowledge

construction, collaboration among students, flexible

and specialized curriculum, and building

competencies are valuable in the Agile teaching

context. Based on these values, the Agile approaches

should be shaped according to the emergent needs of

the students. In particular, syllabuses can dynamically

and iteratively be formed with student feedback. In

addition, focusing on the students and interactions,

building their knowledge, collaborating with teachers

and other students, and responding to changes in the

course design can be considered by the lecturers

while structuring their courses. Based on these

principles and the Agile Manifesto, the following

principles can guide Agile teaching. There can be

different and additional principles, but the main idea

is that the development of software, system, ideas, or

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710

teaching approaches can have common grounds to

borrow from each other as they all exhibit complex

system characteristics.

 P1: Students, as the customers of the classes,

should be satisfied through the early and

continuous delivery of valuable knowledge.

 P2: Lecturers should welcome changes in course

content and syllabuses, even in the later times of

the courses. For the sake of students’ competitive

advantage, teaching should benefit from change.

 P3: Delivering feedback to students and getting

feedback from them within shorter timescales is

essential.

 P4: Students, lecturers, and stakeholders should

work together throughout the course.

 P5: Support and motivation should be provided to

students in order to build and foster their learning

environments.

 P6: The most efficient and effective method of

conveying information to and within the class is

face-to-face conversation.

 P7: Learning is the primary measure of progress.

 P8: Agile teaching should promote a sustainable

pace.

 P9: Continuous attention to the technical

excellence of teaching platforms enhances

learning.

 P10: Simplicity is essential in teaching Agile.

 P11: Self-organizing teams should be encouraged

among students.

 P12: Students and lecturers should reflect on how

to become more effective, then tune and adjust

their behaviour accordingly.

2.2 Theory

Every practice (should) bear(s) a theory behind it. For

this reason, an Agile lecture may touch the theoretical

side of Agile, before starting directly with the practice

side. Thus, it is not possible to avoid the theoretical

explanations of Agile. The main point of the

theoretical part is about where it should start and end

and how much it should be. However, there is no clear

line about how much theoretical and practical lecture

should be offered to the students, but it seems that

both types should be included.

In practice, by the approaches adopted by many

practitioners for training, Agile is regarded as a

subject that does not go beyond the Agile Manifesto

in terms of the starting point of the mental journey of

/for Agile. In terms of origin, rather than starting with

the Agile Manifesto that is commonly used to

introduce Agile principles, the point should be taken

from a wider and more extensive perspective to

provide a better understanding of the agility concept

(Ozkan, Gök, and Köse, 2020).

For a better understanding of the agility concept,

lecturers should consider introducing what agile and

agility mean, why we need them, and what their

origins are. An agile mindset should be properly

established before introducing any Agile methods,

techniques, and rituals or before directly diving into a

specific Agile method.

Agility is a phenomenon that has been in life, at

least since the birth of living creatures. The living

creatures are born with the pure agility capabilities

they need by nature. Organizations are simply trying

to bring the capabilities of this phenomenon into their

fields. For this reason, the theory and philosophy of

agility should go back to its origin, to its untouched

(unspoiled) version in real life. Real-life covers and

illuminates the need for agility and the nature and

characteristics of complexity. It is a kind reminder

that it is possible to reach a definition of agility that is

purer, stronger, and more obvious in this way. Thus,

The Agile course should start at least from this point

(of view).

After anticipating the need for teaching an

accurate Agile theory and that the Agile mindset,

values, and principles are crucial in teaching Agile,

we may face an issue; they are difficult to teach

(Kropp and Meier, 2013). Maybe, this is why they are

in most cases completely neglected in current course

programs (Kropp and Meier, 2013). The issue is that

without them, the practitioners can be deficient in

how to be agile, their belief in being agile may stay

weak and the lectures may become similar to Agile

training excessively produced by/for the industry.

Consequently, we have to face this reality; this

subject should be taught properly to the students.

After the conceptual introduction to the agility

phenomenon, human-made Agile artefacts, mostly

known as Agile methods, take place to provide agility

to organizations in concrete manners. When it comes

to Agile methods to teach, they are varying options

including Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming,

and so on. At this point, teaching multiple methods

instead of a single one can have many benefits. While

the spectrum of view with a single method is limited

to the relevant method only, it can be possible to go

beyond such limits with a second method to enrich

the perspectives of students. Thus, it can be possible

to compare and combine multiple methods when

possible and needed to get more a powerful one

and/or when realizing context limitations with a

particular method. Integrating multiple methods into

the curriculum may also provide relevant university

courses to stay more relevant and up-to-date

Various Shades of Teaching Agile

711

(Matthies, 2018). Specifically speaking regarding the

method selection, Scrum, the most widely used and

known one, can be preferred to support the students

in their professional life in which Scrum is widely

used. Already, most Agile teaching courses use and

focus on Scrum (Matthies, 2018). In addition to

Scrum, Kanban can be introduced to the students, as

Kanban and combinations of it with Scrum have been

increasingly used according to reports (Matthies,

2018). In terms of timing, as Kanban is rooted back

to Lean principles rather than Agile principles, it may

be better to introduce Kanban to the students after

they gain experience with Scrum (Mahnic, 2015)

which is closer to the basics of Agile approaches.

Agile can be praised a lot and negative aspects of

Agile can be omitted in the classes (Kropp and Meier,

2013). In addition, to prepare the students for the

“dark side of the coin” (Janes and Succi, 2012), the

lecture can be followed by a caution stage about

commercialized versions of Agile in the industry

evangelized with economical concerns resulting in

misleading concepts about agility (Ozkan and Gök,

2021) and about problems with the manifesto (Ozkan,

2019) in particular.

2.3 Reinforcement: Practice

Teaching is for learning (of students) (in relevance to

P1, P7). The learning process has its unique way for

each learner. The opportunity for each student to

experience a development process, assess outcomes

and iteratively apply their gained knowledge

positively impacts learning success (The Joint Task

Force on Computing Curricula, 2013). In this regard,

rather than considering students solely as absorbers

and teachers the only holders of knowledge (Barrows,

and Tamblyn, 1980), the Agile teaching methods

should let students create their learning journeys by

putting the students’ needs and engagement at the

centre (Ozkan et. al, 2022) (in relevance to P1 and

P5).

To build this individual and unique knowledge for

each student, interactive learning can be helpful. With

interactive learning facilitated by lecturers to

accompany students’ learning process, students can

be engaged with higher motivation for a longer period

of time. This deep interaction and long-time duration

pave the way for the development of teamwork,

interpersonal, leadership and social skills, self-

directed learning, and problem-solving that are

crucial in teaching (Fernandes, Dinis-Carvalho and

Ferreira-Oliveira, 2021), as well as to realize what the

Agile principles provide. Specifically speaking,

project-based learning, gamification, laboratory

environments to practice the theoretical lecturers

especially when coding accompanied by the

principles of Extreme Programming is executed,

doing knowledge contests and evaluating students’

level of knowledge, online platforms providing

valuable content according to the needs of individual

students, and debating between student groups (as in

the case of Martin, Anslow, and Johnson (2017)) can

be used to support students to create their individual

learning process.

As an interactive learning technique, project-

based learning and educational games may play

crucial roles. Among the reinforcement methods, the

most frequently used and prominent ones are already

projects and applying gamification activities. Even

though there are some challenges in terms of

managing time limits in the classrooms, by playing

educational games, engaging, interactive and

relatively quick to learn and play, all students become

pretty much at same level regarding their skills,

allowing their equal participation and active

contributions (Paasivaara, et. al, 2014). To refresh the

students’ theoretical knowledge, various gamification

practices can be applied. Lego Scrum simulation

exercises and creating objects from paper sheets

during several sprints are among the prominent ones

(Matthies, Kowark and Uflacker, 2016; Paasivaara,

et. al, 2014) and are regarded positively by the

students (Paasivaara, et. al, 2014).

In this study, we will give a special and dedicated

place only for Scrum-project-based learning due to

the space limitations.

2.3.1 Project-Based Learning

Structuring the Project-Based Learning

As Bruegge et al. (2009) point out, to penetrate and

internalize the Agile values, a theoretical lecture

alone is not enough. Mahnič (2015, b), Devedzic and

Milenkovic (2011), and Kropp and Meier (2013)

highlight the need for Agile approaches to be taught

using practical projects. Real projects allow students

to work on solving interesting and relevant real-world

problems (Schneider et. al, 2020; Linos et. al, 2020).

A real-world project with failures and successes

motivates students to collaborate, explore and take

responsibility (Feliciano, Storey, and Zagalsky,

2016).

Project ideas should be realistic and exhibit

sufficient complexity and details to the students

(Schneider et. al, 2020). The students should be

allowed to form their problem and solution spaces in

their projects. They can use Design Thinking methods

in this step. Project ideas, solution designs, product

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backlogs, team formations, Sprint events, and team

communication manners could differ across the teams

whereas some other results including report

templates, number of sprints, duration of sprints,

expected delivery types from Sprints, having

supervision meetings, and project assessment criteria

can be common across the teams to synchronize the

learning and teaching process with a sustainable pace

(relevant to P8).

Some students appreciate working in self-

organizing ways, while others may prefer to have

more structural formations (Matthies, Kowark and

Uflacker, 2016). However, self-organizing teams are

located at the core of Agile principles and are crucial

for Agile projects to be successful. To experience

team dynamics and learn effective team management

(Linos et. al, 2020), lecturers should allow students to

self-organize in their projects (in relevance to P11)

because self-organizing team formations support

team members with a team spirit in a positive way

(Matthies, Kowark and Uflacker, 2016).

Self-organizing team formations have some

challenges independent from application domains;

whether they are student or professional projects. For

instance, uneven task distribution is an ongoing

challenge in self-organizing teams (Matthies, 2018).

In the context of student projects in education that are

run in relatively short terms, self-organizing team

members can face a high level of challenges,

especially in the early stages of the projects. These

challenges are likely to increase as the team members

are not likely to have sufficient experience in the

Agile approaches (assuming that all students start

learning Agile within the same class). Classical team

structures should not be an alternative for the Agile

teams, and the student teams should be allowed to

experience self-organizing somehow.

Customers play a crucial role in which they

specify needs and acceptance criteria, review

increments, and pivot the whole product in the desired

direction. Such a role cannot be achieved by

mimicking someone else. Rather than instructors or

people from the course playing an artificial customer

role, real customers may provide real challenges,

feedback, and reactions to real solutions developed by

the students. Having customers with real problems

paves the way for establishing the products in more

effective and efficient ways.

In this case, reaching such real customers when

needed occurs as a new challenge. To make

connecting to real customers easier, the students may

be encouraged to contact their close environments

that can be reached and accessed easily, such as their

family members, other students, or their fellow

citizens. Independent from the location of a

university, thanks to the digital capabilities of this era,

such profiles can be reached and involved in the

projects. In this way, the students can apply quasi-

real-world projects with such customer profiles. In

some cases, including Masood, Hoda and Blincoe

(2018), the students deal with real problems in

various fields and work as a real Agile team to

develop real solutions. This option can be more

challenging in terms of finding and establishing such

opportunities for the students than the former one.

The last option can be to have projects which do not

involve any real customers. In this case, someone can

pretend to be a customer. However, playing any role,

especially the customer role, can decrease the

effectiveness of the projects.

In some cases, including the course by Mahnič

(2010), we see that Product Owner (PO) and Scrum

Master (SM) roles were assigned to the teaching

team. Or, PO and SM roles can be performed by

students (Matthies, 2018). Van Hout and Gootjes

(2015) found the SM role being played by students

has a positive effect in having greater sense of

responsibility for outcomes and the self-organization

of the teams. We argue that PO and SM roles can be

more suitable to be included within the student teams.

Having Scrum roles played by students, instead of a

teaching team, does not at least harm collaboration in

the teams (Matthies, Kowark and Uflacker, 2016).

Such inclusion can support to be a compact Scrum

team including PO, SM, and developers together. The

teams may jointly select their PO and SM roles

among the team members, with additional attention

due to the inherent complexity and importance of

these roles (Matthies, Kowark and Uflacker, 2016;

Paasivaara et. al, 2014).

Special care should be taken of keeping the

number of members of the Scrum teams within the

recommended limits; not more than nine people

including SM and PO, and not less than the number

to handle the project to be done. The degree of

closeness of the students in a team can be an

advantage or disadvantage to the sense of "reality";

some students may treat their close friends

differently/unprofessionally in work-related matters

in the projects, because of that differentiating work-

related-matters from friendship in the case of close

friendships is not likely to be possible among some

students.

When it comes to team formation period, there

should be enough time before starting to the project.

Thus, prospective teams can have more time to

prepare for their projects and they can have an

opportunity for team building with a shared aim,

Various Shades of Teaching Agile

713

understanding, and synergy toward their projects

(Ozkan et. al, 2022). There should also be some

preparation steps for teams before their first Sprint as

well. These steps can be used for setting up the teams,

determining their products, preparing their product

backlogs, and, like in Sprint 0, preparing the general

infrastructure and architectural designs for the

products. Thus, such steps can be performed in large

and flexible time slots, before the first Sprint, which

does not fully correspond to the Scrum Sprint

structure. For instance, Linos et. al (2020) suggest

locating a separate initial Sprint 0 for such cases. One

of the things to remember is that the students do not

have ready-to-start products, business units or

customers to prepare product ideas at the first stage,

rather, they are supposed to handle the preliminary

preparations stages for their products.

Review of Projects

Giving the teams the authority to self-organize comes

with some challenges. The new-born self-organizing

student Agile teams may easily fall into mistakes and

moreover they may not be able to recognize their

mistakes. The student teams should be supported with

intensive coaching, especially to align them with the

theoretical lectures. In applications and adaptations of

their processes according to their needs and contexts,

intensive coaching and feedback are vital to learn

from their mistakes, especially if the team cannot self-

correct itself after a while (Matthies, Kowark and

Uflacker, 2016).

To provide this consultancy, each or some Scrum

events may be performed in the presence of a tutor

and/or lecturer to answer questions and give advice

(Matthies, Kowark and Uflacker, 2016). In addition,

having students who have Scrum knowledge

beforehand can help get support in this regard. As

such an accompaniment requires a considerable

increase in the amount of time spent on supervision

and support of the teams (Matthies, Kowark and

Uflacker, 2016), external support outside of the class

can also be sought. Linos et. al (2020) exhibit a

successful case for the professionals who voluntarily

and regularly engaged with the student Scrum teams

throughout their course. As reported, even though this

practice has limitations such as the time commitment

of the professionals, it also brought some benefits to

stakeholders such as receiving some gratification,

getting first-hand experience in teaching, learning,

mentoring, leadership, revisiting fundamental

concepts and bringing some ideas back to their office

to improve their processes.

In absence of the support from the industry, it may

be possible for the lecturers to accompany the online

sessions of Scrum teams. Reviewing the projects

during these additional online sessions outside of

class hours may create available spaces and time.

The projects can be evaluated only by students,

lecturers or by all participants including students,

lecturers, and other stakeholders to reach a fully

comprehensive evaluation. The evaluations made by

students only may danger a fair evaluation due to the

friendships between them. The evaluation scores

should be assigned team-based according to the agile

principles.

2.4 Means of Communication

Well-functioning Agile teams are advised to work

together at the same place as it is a key standard for

the Agile teams (Gren, Torkar, and Feldt2017).

Meanwhile, the case of individually dispersed teams

has become common for many organizations,

especially after Sars-Cov-2 Pandemic and the shift to

working from home. However, remote work brings

several new challenges for the Agile teams, especially

in terms of in-person interactions, such as a lack of

face-to-face communication (Ozkan, Erdil, and Gök,

2022). Even though many tools support interactions

efficiently, they are still not as effective as face-to-

face conversation (Mancl, Fraser, 2020). Non-verbal

communication that carries a lot more expressiveness

like facial expressions, gestures, posture, proximity,

tone of voice, pitch, etc. compared to verbal

communication has been lost in this context

(Mehrabian, 2017). Therefore, we strongly

recommend conducting Agile teaching classes in a

face-to-face manner (relevant to P6). Hybrid methods

can be preferred when there are difficulties in

accessing the lectures, for example, if a guest

participant cannot attend them.

The classes can be supported with instant

messaging channels and online tools like Trello to

keep the course content topics as a Product Backlog

List and survey tools that collect opinions and

feedback anonymously, statistically and when

needed. Online meeting tools can be used to conduct

meetings for students and to easily integrate

mentors/coaches from distance into their meetings (in

relevance to P3, P4, and P9).

2.5 Feedback Loops

Having a continuous improvement spirit at its heart,

Agile teaching should have a mechanism to improve

the teaching methods and approaches (in relevance to

P12). The data can be collected at varying parts of the

classes with various manners to identify and make

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Figure 1: Agile Teaching Ways in a Decision-tree-like Path.

any necessary adjustments based on feedback from

students (in relevance to P3).

Two types of surveys have been mainly observed

by the authors of this paper: First one is to get

feedback about key aspects of Agile practices. What

we have seen about this type is that the students do

not have sound references or baselines to compare the

Agile practices with others. At best, the results from

such surveys provide inputs to the body of knowledge

with minor or no significant differences from current

studies; mostly, the majority of the students point out

a positive attitude towards the Agile practices. The

second type is about Agile teaching and students’

perceptions about and satisfaction with the Agile

courses. These types of surveys appear to be efficient

in improving such classes, especially when their

results are shared with other practitioners.

Various Shades of Teaching Agile

715

Lecturers may ask students to write a learning

diary (Paasivaara et. al, 2014) and/or essays (Masood,

Hoda and Blincoe, 2018) about each teaching

exercise. In addition, instructors can keep a personal

journal during the classes with observations and

challenges faced (Linos et. al, 2020).

Constructing a consulting team of students and the

lecturer can be one another option in order to shape

the lectures and to get feedback from the students.

This team can focus on improving the lecture by

refining the course syllabus and investigating the best

and good practices from other similar and relevant

lectures in both the context of the same country and

the globe. Investigating related papers, possible tools

and techniques to use, and evaluating previous years’

experiences of the same lecture, if any, could be some

other activities of this dedicated team. By getting and

integrating fresh and accurate feedback on the way,

the lecturer can make changes in course content and

syllabus, even in further weeks of the courses to

harness such changes for the sake of students’

competitive advantage (in relevance to P2).

3 CONCLUSIONS

Agile methods and approaches continue reinforcing

and expanding its place in today's complex world and

business processes. The systems are being developed

and take place in a complex world with highly vague

environments including the concept of human being,

who has high complexity. The agility phenomenon,

which aims to cope with such complexity, has entered

many large and small organizations in one way or

another. Learning the agility phenomenon, which is

becoming de-facto standard for dealing with complex

world and processes, also contains complexity. The

fact that the concept of agility is abstract and new, the

area it wants to address is complex, and the level of

human contact in its learning is high can be counted

among the factors that increase the challenge in its

teaching. Despite these challenges, it is inevitable that

the agility phenomenon will become a standard in

many sectors, and that it will be commonly used in

the university education as well. Classical teaching

methods are getting old and losing their effectiveness

and the need to teach agility as a subject at the “early”

stages of life has started to come to the surface more

clearly.

There are diverse applications of Agile teaching

and learning mentioned in the literature. However,

they are mostly case studies, posing a lack of

theoretical and comprehensive dimensions on the

subject to guide educators. It makes it difficult for a

lecturer who wants to design such a course to choose

suitable methods according to needs among many

options. In this study, considering these basic needs,

we discussed multiple Agile teaching methods,

emphasized the significance of some of them, and

discussed them in detail. Thus, during the teaching of

this subject, this paper aims to inspire and guide those

who design, operate, and take such courses.

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