An approach to agile management of virtual student teams in smart environment development

ABSTRACT

This paper studies the problem of coordination and supervision of virtual teams and their capabilities. The goal is to develop a model suitable for managing virtual student teams specialized in the development of smart environments. The developed model is based on SAFe and DevOps, which when combined provide us with a framework for the evaluation of team capabilities in an academic environment. Additionally, DevOps principles can be more efficiently leveraged through an agile methodology to provide students with a better understanding of continuous value delivery. Through the application of the proposed model, virtual student teams gained practical experience in self-organization and virtual team management while being efficiently monitored and guided through the project lifecycle. Virtual student teams were likewise encouraged to be more agile, as this change in mindset is imperative in business, and as such must also be adopted in academic environments. By incorporating best practices of the corporate environments into the existing curriculum, we have proven that by adopting the proposed model these changes can be feasibly incorporated to the satisfaction of both the students and their future employers.

KEYWORDS:

• Smart environment
• virtual student teams
• agile
• SAFe
• DevOps
• organizational management

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia: [institutional funding of FON and IEN].

Notes on contributors

Jelena Mihajlović-Milićević

Jelena Mihajlović-Milićević is PhD student at Faculty of organizational sciences, University of Belgrade, Serbia. Her areas of interest are: e-education, agile project management, smart environments.

Miloš Radenković

Miloš Radenković is an assistant professor at School of Computing, Union University, Serbia. His research interests include smart environments, software engineering, and DevOps. He is a member of the IEEE and the IEEE Computer Society.

Aleksandra Labus

Aleksandra Labus is an associate professor at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade. She is a member of the IEEE and the IEEE Computer Society. She is a treassurer of IEEE Computer chapter CO 16. Her research interests include: e-business, internet of things, e-education and social networks.

Danijela Stojanović

Danijela Stojanović is a research associate at the Institute of Economic Sciences in Belgrade. She is a member of the IEEE and the IEEE Computer Society. Her research interests include e-education, information technologies and internet of things.

Zorica Bogdanović

Zorica Bogdanović is a professor at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade, and the head of the IoT center. She is a member of the IEEE and the IEEE Computer Society. She is a secretary of IEEE Computer chapter CO 16 and the head of the seminar of IEEE Computer chapter CO 16. Her research interests include: e-learning, internet technologies, and IoT.