I am very pleased to see agile methods coming into journalism schools. For too long, when I described agile methods to long-time journalists, they acted like they couldn’t understand agile. It isn’t hard, it is actually the most effective way to work when all parties are connected but you need a way to create mindshare.
In the classroom, every semester feels like a sprint, so some professors feel immediately comfortable with agile terminology. Sasha Anawalt, associate professor at USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism and director of the USC Arts Journalism Programs, now uses sprints to organize her students’ semester-long independent arts journalism projects. Each student reports her progress in a “scrum,” a short meeting where every participant says what she did that week, what she plans to do next and what the obstacles are in her way. “We scrum at the beginning of every class now,” says Anawalt. “It really works. (via The J-School Scrum: Bringing Agile Development Into the Classroom | Mediashift | PBS)
Barbara K Iverson 