Software Kaizen: Using Agile to Form High-Perfomance Software Development Teams

The process of teaching Software Engineering has undergone questions about the methods that have been used in training activities. Recent studies show that these methods involve traditional teaching strategies, such as presentation of theory and lectures. For this reason, students usually find in industry a different scenario than what is taught in the classroom. In parallel, other studies indicate that the emergence of agile methods in the 90s led to the formation of high performance teams with great level of knowledge in technical, business and behavioral domains. For this reason, we have proposed a training method called Software Kaizen, which provides temporary immersion of a team in a high-performance environment, based on agile methodologies. This paper presents the method and the results obtained from its application. We report on four replications of the method, with good results in learning, posture change and teamwork, some of the expected characteristics of high-performance teams.