Snowman: Agile development method with institutionalized communication and documentation for capstone projects

Numerous organizations currently implement agile methods in practical software development processes. Using agile methods involves mutually strengthening communication to ease the burden involved in documenting plan-driven projects. A focus on people-oriented communication has resulted in agile methods being diverted from development processes that codify formal documents. This situation makes follow-up software maintenance difficult. This paper proposes an appropriate and concrete approach for streamlining communication and documentation in software engineering education called the Snowman approach. The results of evaluations conducted indicate that the proposed Snowman approach enables undergraduate students to learn agile methods and resolves misconceptions surrounding agile methods.