Agile Methodologies for Hardware/Software Teams for a Capstone Design Course: Lessons Learned

Agile methodologies aid software engineering teams by defining the tools and processes necessary to succeed. These methodologies can be tailored to support engineers from other disciplines such as computer engineering. This paper discusses a four year effort at EmbryRiddle Aeronautical University to integrate agile methodologies into our capstone design course for computer engineering and software engineering. This paper discusses the positive and negative aspects of using agile methodologies, and how the faculty has adapted agile processes/tools to better support larger and more multi-disciplinary teams. It concludes with some lessons learned for faculty considering using agile for their design projects.