Agile management for industrial engineering capstone projects – overcoming the COVID 19 challenge

The Industrial Engineering capstone projects at Tecnologico de Monterrey (ITESM) are usually affected by several uncertainty factors: scopes poorly defined by the company; variable levels of collaboration with company personnel; ignorance about the company, and some technical methods by the students. In the Feb-Jun 2020 semester, this complexity increased due to the COVID19 contingency. The management of academic projects under these levels of uncertainty to achieve the satisfaction of students, clients, and teachers is indeed a challenge. This article presents the results of an innovation methodology for managing full-immersion projects using the Scrum-based Project Management tropicalized to academic assignments. The pilot test was carried out in the Feb-Jun 2020 semester with 30 students. The experimentation group (5 Scrums) used Scrum with three Scrum sprints, weekly 20-minute Scrum meetings, and three complete, customer-validated deliverables. The control group (3 projects) used a project charter, progress presentation, and deliverables at the end of the semester. The exit surveys answered by students, companies, and professors show that agile project management improved the experience and results for all the people involved, supported by Analysis of Variance with a 5% significance level.