Teaching Leadership in Agile Software Engineering Education: A Case Study using Scrum and Challenge Based Learning

Nicolas Nascimento; Afonso Sales; Rafael Chanin

doi:10.5753/jbcs.2026.5981

Authors

Nicolas Nascimento Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0080-8822
Afonso Sales Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6962-3706
Rafael Chanin Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6293-7419

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5753/jbcs.2026.5981

Keywords:

Active Learning, Leadership Teaching, Software Development

Abstract

The increasing adoption of agile methodologies in software engineering has emphasized the relevance of soft skills, particularly leadership. However, little is known about effective strategies to teach and develop these skills in educational settings. In this context, this paper presents an exploratory case study investigating the impact of assigning leadership roles — specifically, the Product Owner role — within agile student teams engaged in a Challenge Based Learning environment. Our main goal in the study was to improve the understanding of role assignments in software engineering education. To achieve this, we have conducted a case study over 10 weeks with 45 undergraduate students across 9 Scrum teams examining six soft skills: communication, coordination, cohesion, teamwork, leadership, and motivation. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed qualitatively. Our results provide indications that assigning leadership roles has the potential to enhance students’ awareness and development of leadership competencies, promotes team engagement, and supports the alignment of individual and collective goals. The study offers evidence that integrating role-based leadership training in agile learning environments is a valuable pedagogical approach for software engineering education.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Athukorala, C., Perera, I., and Meedeniya, D. (2016). The impact of transformational and transactional leadership styles on knowledge creation in sri lankan software industry. In 2016 Moratuwa Engineering Research Conference (MERCon), pages 309-314. IEEE.

Beecham, S., Baddoo, N., Hall, T., Robinson, H., and Sharp, H. (2008). Motivation in software engineering: A systematic literature review. Information and software technology, 50(9-10):860-878.

Chanin, R., Sales, A., Pompermaier, L. B., and Prikladnicki, R. (2018a). Challenge based startup learning: a framework to teach software startup. In Proceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, ITiCSE 2018, Larnaca, Cyprus, July 02-04, 2018, pages 266-271. DOI: 10.1145/3197091.3197122.

Chanin, R., Sales, A., Santos, A. R., Pompermaier, L., and Prikladnicki, R. (2018b). A collaborative approach to teaching software startups: Findings from a study using challenge based learning. In Proc. of the 11th Inter. Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering, CHASE '18, pages 9-12, New York, NY, USA. ACM.

Cruzes, D. S. and Dyba, T. (2011). Recommended Steps for Thematic Synthesis in Software Engineering. In 2011 International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, number 7491, pages 275-284, Alberta, CA. IEEE.

da Silva, F. Q., Monteiro, C. V., dos Santos, I. E., and Capretz, L. F. (2016). How software development group leaders influence team members' innovative behavior. IEEE Software, 33(5):106-109.

Faraj, S. and Sambamurthy, V. (2006). Leadership of information systems development projects. IEEE Transactions on engineering management, 53(2):238-249.

Fowler, M., Highsmith, J., et al. (2001). The agile manifesto. Software development, 9(8):28-35.

Furumo, K., de Pillis, E., and Buxton, M. (2012). The impact of leadership on participation and trust in virtual teams. In Proc. of the 50th annual conference on Computers and People Research, pages 123-126.

Gallagher, S. E. and Savage, T. (2020). Challenge-based learning in higher education: an exploratory literature review. Teaching in Higher Education, pages 1-23.

Goyal, D., Cortinovis, R., and Capretz, L. F. (2022). A framework for class activities to cultivate responsible leadership in software engineering students. In Proc. of the 15th International Conference on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering, pages 96-101.

Gray, D. E. (2022). Doing Research in the Real World. SAGE Publications, London, UK, 5th edition.

Hidayati, A., Budiardjo, E. K., and Purwandari, B. (2020). Hard and soft skills for scrum global software development teams. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Software Engineering and Information Management, pages 110-114.

Hoegl, M. and Gemuenden, H. G. (2001). Teamwork quality and the success of innovative projects: A theoretical concept and empirical evidence. Organization science, 12(4):435-449.

Kitchenham, B., Pickard, L., and Pfleeger, S. L. (1995). Case studies for method and tool evaluation. IEEE software, 12(4):52-62.

Li, P. L., Ko, A. J., and Zhu, J. (2015). What makes a great software engineer? In Proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Software Engineering-Volume 1, pages 700-710. IEEE Press.

Marquez, J. M. D., Aguja, S. E., and Prudente, M. S. (2022). Evaluation of student leadership development amidst online distance learning set-up. In Proc. of the 2022 13th International Conference on E-Education, E-Business, E-Management, and E-Learning, pages 118-123.

Matturro, G., Raschetti, F., and Fontán, C. (2015). Soft skills in software development teams: A survey of the points of view of team leaders and team members. In 2015 IEEE/ACM 8th Int. Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering, pages 101-104.

Nichols, M. and Cator, K. (2008). Challenge Based Learning White Paper. Technical report, Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA, USA.

Nichols, M., Cator, K., and Torres, M. (2016). Challenge Based Learning Guide. Digital Promise, Redwood City, CA, USA.

Przybilla, L., Präg, A., Wiesche, M., and Krcmar, H. (2020). A conceptual model of antecedents of emergent leadership in agile teams. In Proc. of the 2020 on Computers and People Research Conf., pages 164-165.

Przybilla, L., Wiesche, M., and Krcmar, H. (2019). Emergent leadership in agile teams-an initial exploration. In Proceedings of the 2019 on Computers and People Research Conference, pages 176-179.

Runeson, P. and Höst, M. (2009a). Guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research in software engineering. Empirical software engineering, 14(2):131.

Runeson, P. and Höst, M. (2009b). Guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research in software engineering. In ., volume 14, pages 131-164. Springer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-008-9102-8.

Ryan, R. M. and Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary educational psychology, 25(1):54-67.

Salas, E., Shuffler, M. L., Thayer, A. L., Bedwell, W. L., and Lazzara, E. H. (2015). Understanding and improving teamwork in organizations: A scientifically based practical guide. Human resource management, 54(4):599-622.

Sangwan, R. S. and Ros, J. (2008). Architecture leadership and management in globally distributed software development. In Proceedings of the first international workshop on Leadership and management in software architecture, pages 17-22.

Santos, A., Sales, A., Fernandes, P., and Nichols, M. (2015). Combining Challenge-Based Learning and Scrum Framework for Mobile Application Development. In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE'15), pages 189-194, Vilnius, Lithuania.

Schwaber, K. and Sutherland, J. (2011). The scrum guide. Scrum Alliance, 21.

Silva, T. S. d., Silveira, M. S., and Maurer, F. (2013). Ten lessons learned from integrating interaction design and agile development. In Agile Conference, pages 42-49, Nashville, TN, USA. DOI: 10.1109/AGILE.2013.11.

Van Kelle, E., Visser, J., Plaat, A., and van der Wijst, P. (2015). An empirical study into social success factors for agile software development. In 2015 IEEE/ACM 8th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering, pages 77-80. IEEE.

Wellington, C. A., Briggs, T., and Girard, C. D. (2005). Examining team cohesion as an effect of software engineering methodology. In Proceedings of the 2005 workshop on Human and social factors of software engineering, pages 1-5.

Woodward, C. J., Cain, A., Pace, S., Jones, A., and Kupper, J. F. (2013). Helping students track learning progress using burn down charts. In Proceedings of 2013 IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment and Learning for Engineering (TALE), pages 104-109. IEEE.

Yang, Z., Zhou, Y., Chung, J. W., Tang, Q., Jiang, L., and Wong, T. K. (2018). Challenge based learning nurtures creative thinking: An evaluative study. Nurse education today, 71:40-47.