I gave this talk at the XP2012 conference. For the past two years, I've tried to go to universities to teach Agile practices during my spare time. I give tips and tricks, and try to inspire others to take a bit of their time to go to universities and help grow the next generation of Agilists.

1. Bringing Agile to Universities
A journey to the academic world
Marc Lainez @mlainez

2. What are the obstacles when adopting Agile?

3. It’s hard to change
how people think
If you want to make enemies,
try to change something.
- Woodrow Wilson -

4. It’s hard to change bad habits
It is easier to prevent bad
habits than to break them.
- Benjamin Franklin -

5. Barriers to agile adoption
Ability to change organizational culture 52%
Availability of personnel with right skills 40%
General resistance to change 39%
http://www.versionone.com/state_of_agile_development_survey/11/

6. You need the right mindset

7. And make this guy
embrace it!

8. We have really good
agilists for that!
Helping people and
companies
http:/
/leanpub.com/WhoIsAgile
@YvesHanoulle

9. But sometimes it’s already too late...

10. How can we help?

11. Focus on universities

12. We need to open students minds to Agile
with projects, workshops, lectures

13. http://agilecampustour.org

14. University Ant werp
Brussels - ULB
UCL
Louvain-la-Neuve
UMons
UMons - Charleroi
30hrs delivered so far
a lot more preparing...
still more to come...

15. Great! But...

16. One does not simply
walk into universities

17. We got back in touch with our assistant teachers
student organizations in other campuses

18. We organized lectures and workshops

19. Lectures to show
students how it is like to
work on an “Agile”
project

20. Adapting the schedule to the different
campuses we went to

21. We presented Agile techniques in the context
of a fictional project
http://www.slideshare.net/agilecampustour

22. We got great feedback!
And improved on the
way, but still...

23. “It’s for small projects”
“Not technical enough”
“It’s not for serious projects”
“It’s project management, I don’t really feel concerned”
“It’s not going deep enough”

24. Assumptions are hard to kill...

25. Use visuals
Be dynamic
Involve them

26. Some examples :)

27. How complex is it to get from those fruits a
small piece you could eat?

28. 3

32. How many can you eat in 1 minute?

33. User story writing
and estimation
workshop

34. We tried poker planning with them

35. And explained business value
with poker chips

36. Time-box
Get help!

37. Self-organizing team and
pair-programming
workshop

38. Using a simple Kanban

39. TDD is hard to teach to students...

40. Cyber-dojo.com
@JonJagger

41. “TDD+Pair Programming = Super”
“I wish we could do that more
often”
“Frustrating but awesome!”
“I’d like to do more stuff like that on my projects”
“I liked working with somebody else”

42. Make sure they have everything
needed on their computers
If you need IT support in the uni,
do it way before the workshop

43. Great, but did it change anything?

44. What now?

45. Open library Co-Working
Academic seminar
Agile Summer Camp
about Agile

46. You could do the same in your city or country...

47. And contribute to create a more Agile generation!

48. Thank you!
ml@theotherguys.be @mlainez