Soft-Aware Development: Social Emotional Learning as an Agile Process.

Industry trends showcase the increasing importance of soft skills, but interpersonal STEM education is not yet well defined [7, 14]. With high technology churn and increasingly higher-level programming practices, the need for effective collaboration remains constant, as "productivity depends on a work force that is socially and emotionally competent" [5]. Social and Emotional Learning promotes engagement in STEM [1, 6], while experiential/makerspace learning increases equity, belonging, and competency [3, 13, 19]. Reflecting on undergraduate Agile [2] Software Development at Knox College, we contend that learning to make Software is less important than learning to work together while attempting to make Software. We define Soft-Aware Development to encompass building Software, building stakeholder relationships, and building up each developer along the way. We frequently ask students to collaborate without explicitly teaching them how. Short-term team projects often lead to unsustainable coping strategies of carrying and freeloading. Consequently, students perceive teamwork as detrimental and unpleasant [16, 21]. After these practices and beliefs are reinforced through multiple iterations, we release students into the world. While user stories are valued [4], developer stories are overlooked, despite both being Software Development stakeholders. Developer agency and happiness improve productivity [8, 15], emotional intelligence helps mitigate stress and build trust [17], while heterogeneous teams demonstrate improved critical thinking and innovation [18]. Thus, teamwork requires a commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Agile iterative processes make room for teammates to hold each other "accountable but blameless" [9], but inexperienced implementation can lead to dark Agile instead [10, 11, 12]. Facilitation is crucial to help students gain confidence with open accountability and understand that, while development happens in sprints [2], teamwork is a marathon. Classroom Soft-Aware Development emphasizes student learning in and from their emergent makerspace environment, guided by interpersonal observation, documentation, self-reflection, discussion, and iteration. We build small 3-4 student teams, balanced for self-reported personal and technical strengths/weaknesses, with team contracts defining expectations (e.g. communication frequency and latency). Constrained by shared project requirements, teams decide on specific deliverables and task assignments. Class-time consists of mini-lectures on industry practices, followed by extensive work-sessions, allowing observation of team dynamics. To extend observation beyond the classroom, we require stand-up meeting notes, team-chat channels, and digital task boards. Each 1-2 week sprint culminates in user testing, review of outcomes, retrospective of processes, and confidential self-and-peer evaluations. These practices enable individual feedback/grading, as well as individual and team meetings to identify and dissipate underlying tensions. A multi-sprint structure allows students to adapt and retry. Development terminates with individual and team post-mortems to reflect on the full scope of lessons learned. While students do not initially welcome the required procedures, post-mortems showcase that students grow to value and depend on them. Our experiences showcase how diverse observation methods elucidate individual efforts and team dynamics, enabling timely interventions. Corrective feedback focusing solely on software deliverables is insufficient, while teamwork interventions re-emphasizing SCRUM values [20] and Agile Manifesto principles [2] greatly improve morale, collaboration, and deliverables. This highlights the need for faculty training in conflict resolution and for time to work with individual students and teams. Students’ reflections consistently report personal and professional growth, increased confidence, and improved team satisfaction.