INTEGRATING AGILE CONCEPTS INTO PROJECT MANAGEMENT COURSE FOR BACHELOR DEGREE IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS

The Project Management (PM) course is an integral part of Information Systems (IS) Graduate curricula since 2002 and became a mandatory course for IS bachelor programs according to IS 2010 Curriculum guidelines. But teaching project management concepts for undergraduate students is still a challenge due to the wide scope of the field and the variety of methods, approaches, frameworks, etc. Moreover, during last years new paradigms like agile methods need to be reflected, especially after the Project Management Institute officially incorporated agile guidance into the last edition of PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) Guide. In this paper we discuss a specific approach for presenting project management concepts in more than one course in the undergraduate program on Information Systems at Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics (Sofia University). This approach helps us to leverage the main PM course to incorporate agile methods. We describe details about the courses and their relationships, as well the knowledge and skills that bachelor students obtain as a result. We also discuss some additional elements of the presented approach like using real stakeholders in the educational process.