Developing a Spiral Curriculum for Teaching Agile at the National Software Academy

The National Software Academy (NSA) was established at Cardiff University in October 2016 as a centre of excellence for Applied Software Engineering. We work in partnership with Welsh Government and industry leaders to address the national shortage of software engineering graduates with the skills, knowledge, and hands-on experience required to be immediately effective as commercial software engineers. We run an innovative, industry-focused B.Sc. which uses agile methods to facilitate our project-based learning (PjBL) approach. The projects are provided by our network of industrial partners and are used across multiple modules as a basis for assessment across the disciplines. Although the degree course has yet to produce any graduates, a significant proportion already hold conditional job offers. A conversion M.Sc. in Applied Software Engineering for STEM graduates has also been developed, and will benefit from lessons learned as we continue to inspect and adapt the undergraduate degree programme. This chapter outlines how a spiral curriculum has been developed for teaching agile that progressively introduces complexity whilst building on previous learning.