Summit students in Derek Duncan's Introduction to Engineering class were introduced to professional project management using some tools from the Agile and Scrum frameworks. Scrum is an agile project management framework that guides teams in organizing their structure and managing their work through a set of values, principles and practices. This kind of education practice is often used in business, and is typically not taught until college.
Students were visited by Mikayla Trinkley, Summit's Human Resources Director, to provide an example of what a scrum meaning looks like. They learned how to set up a project board using Microsoft Teams and Planner, how to generate actionable tasks, how to run meetings and how to manage their teams. These programs and techniques used widely across the business world, not just by engineers, and will give these students marketable and directly applicable skills.
"It was impressive seeing collegiate level courses being adapted into a high school level engineering class," Mrs. Trinkley says. "Mr. Duncan did an excellent job creating a fun scenario to grab the class's attention while still keeping the scrum and agile frameworks at the forefront of the student's minds."
The class then practiced these techniques with a game. Students pretended they were stranded on a desert island and had to create a plan to survive while having regular meetings to update their team on the progress they had made.
Mr. Duncan shares that everyone "had a fun time and we are excited to use these skills in group engineering projects throughout the coming year!"